The Miniature Wars of Louisville
By Abby Ellin
Most mornings, Preston Poling wakes up somewhere between seven and nine, depending on how late the bourbon kept him up the night before. He downs a vat of coffee with cream and sugar, slips on jeans, a black T-shirt, and a backward baseball cap, and tends to his facial hair. A snip here. Some wax there. His bushy gray beard is his calling card, so attention must be paid.
If there’s time, he’ll whip up pancakes or an omelet. Cooking relaxes him, and Lord knows he could use some of that.
But on this sticky August day in 2024, there’s no time to dawdle. Preston and his girlfriend, Katie Sparacio, 33, have to get to the Louisville Exposition Center, where the Kentucky State Fair is underway — a 123-year-old showdown where reputations are made, lifelong rivalries are born, and for a certain kind of competitor, glory comes in the form of a ribbon. Preston’s got entries to check on. Four of them.
He kisses Ollie, his Shih Tzu, goodbye, and he and Katie hop in his truck. Neither of them speaks. The stakes are understood.
These last few weeks have been crazy. Preston thought fair entries were due August 14, but they really had to be in by August 10. During the day, he’s been working his main gig painting houses; at night, he’s hunched over his work table for hours on end.
Preston drives with purpose, blasting Marilyn Manson. Whatever happens today, it’ll be worth it. He’s proud of his work. Especially his latest piece, the one that’s bound to make people talk.
“I can’t wait to watch people’s reactions,” he says to Katie, as they zip into town.
Katie takes a strand of her waist-length black hair and nibbles on it. “Do you think people will get it?”
Preston smirks. “I’m sure some will.”
Ten minutes later, they pull into the Expo Center, a labyrinth of exhibit halls, livestock pens, riding arenas, and a food court that smells faintly of hay and fried dough. They pass the Astro Wheel, the carousel, and bumper cars, and head inside. The A/C is at full tilt, and a blast of freezing air hits them as they open the door. Quilts on the left, floral displays on the right, and then —
Miniatures.
Yes.
Miniatures.
Because that’s what Preston does: impossibly detailed, obsessively crafted worlds that fit in the palm of your hand. He carves tiny desks, paints carpet fibers, sews microscopic comforters. With his shaved head and tattooed forearms, he knows he doesn’t look like a dude preoccupied with dainty cheese boards and cherry wood bedframes in 1:12 scale. But that’s exactly who he is.
Preston’s proud of his entries: A 4-inch Louis Vuitton steamer trunk; The Walking Dead set; and a room box based on the children’s book, Goodnight Moon. The tiger rug is punch-needle, the artwork is hand-painted, the furnishings are handmade, and the book on the nightstand is a stitch-for-stitch replica of the original.
But his final submission is his baby, the emerald in his Lilliputian crown. At first glance, it’s nothing spectacular, just a 3-inch desk, a rolling office chair, a hand-carved camera, a threadbare gray carpet, and white walls. It could be any office space, anywhere.
Only the black vinyl couch indicates that something else is going on. Because there, on one of the tiny cushions, are two thumbprint-shaped splotches. Look closer, and it’s clear that these are…there’s no denying it… buttocks.
Preston calls it “The Casting Couch.”
The way he sees it, this entry is a public service. It might not seem like it, but really — he’s just trying to alleviate other men’s boredom. He wants to give them a laugh. An inside laugh. A laugh among bros. Because how many guys are truly interested in dollhouses and room boxes and tiny little flowers on tiny little lawns? None, by his estimation. That’s how many. A big fat zero.
Preston wants to change that.
The miniatures exhibit is in the Hobbies and Crafts section of the fair. With 93 entries across ten different categories, it’s one of the most popular areas at the fair, and Preston and Katie have trouble finding his pieces.
But they have no problem noticing Bob Haven, who’s a volunteer proctor for the miniatures exhibition, and a thorn in Preston’s side. They go around him and don’t make eye contact.
They spy Preston’s steamer trunk, and Preston’s stomach drops.
“Shit,” he says. “It’s one of my best. I woulda thought it would win something.” His disappointment is palpable.
“Let’s find the others,” says Katie.
At the end of the display table, she spots Goodnight Moon.
“Look!” she says, pointing to the green ribbon affixed to the frame. Inscribed in gold letters are the words, “Craftsmanship Award.” Nearby is his Walking Dead, which has a blue and a purple ribbon on it.
“First Place and Best in Show!” says Katie, hugging him.
They quickly make their way over to the Casting Couch, which was submitted under the benign “Office Scene,” and immediately glimpse a white ribbon. Third! It took third!
Preston and Katie can’t contain their glee. Four ribbons in one show! That’s pretty damn good, especially considering one of the entries is a little, well, non-traditional.
They stand to the side, pretending to study a Victorian dollhouse, but they’re really watching fairgoers stream in. Some do double takes when they look closer at the Casting Couch. Others call out to their girlfriends or wives as a tsunami of recognition washes over them.
“Babe, check this out!” says a guy in a hoodie.
“What is it?” she asks. She bends her head down and squints. Then: “No! Is that what I think it is?”
Her boyfriend nods. “Sure looks like it.”
The couple stands in front of the piece and snaps a selfie. Others follow suit.
The Casting Couch went viral on TikTok. “It surprised me how many people actually knew what it was,” said one user. Photo credit: mmakingitworkk/TikTok
It takes every ounce of restraint for Preston not to step forward and introduce himself. “I’m the artist!” he wants to shout. “This is my creation!”
Later that day, after he leaves, Preston’s phone begins pinging. His Instagram account, the_bearded_miniaturist, is blowing up.
“Y’all, This cannot be real!”
“The Fucking Sweatyass prints really brought this piece together.”
“Took me a second. OMFG YOU’RE A GENIUS!”
By the end of the day, the Casting Couch will amass some 1.3 million views on TikTok alone. No one’s more surprised than Preston. Oh, he definitely wanted to make a splash — but he wasn’t expecting this.
Without planning it, the 42-year-old craftsman has singlehandedly instigated one of the biggest scandals to hit the world of miniatures. His life will never be the same.
Look closer, and it’s clear that these splotches are… Buttocks. Photo credit: Preston Poling.
If you want to understand southern America, visit the Kentucky State Fair, the down-home event that takes over Louisville every August. It’s a paean to carbs and bourbon and livestock and simpler, more analog times.
For eleven humid days, more than half a million people pour into the Expo Center, a 520-acre concrete sprawl on the edge of town, across from the airport. It’s part county fair, part food festival, part agricultural Olympics, part Michaels craft store. Inside its 1.2-million-square-foot halls you can find a dress made from a deck of cards, mothers spraying their toddlers’ hair before Little Miss and Mister competitions, and a 1,621-pound pumpkin. Outside: a Ferris wheel, a Tilt-A-Whirl, and every kind of artery-clogging food imaginable. Fried pickles? Deep fried butter? Hot Cheetos corn dog? Here, here and here.
Rigorous prep for the Little Mister competition. Photo credit: Abby Ellin
You can walk for hours and never leave the safety of air conditioning. The connected buildings form a maze of arenas and exhibition spaces. On one end, horses prance under spotlights at the World Championship Horse Show, a glittering cavalcade that crowns world champion Saddlebreds, Hackney ponies, and Standardbreds in various divisions. On the other end, 4-H kids brush their prize-winning rabbits, goats and pigs. In between: a smorgasbord of crocheted afghans, ceramic bowls, canned jams, all competing for ribbons.
The first official Kentucky State Fair dates to 1902, but technically it started in 1816, when farmers gathered to show off the best of their cattle and crops. By 1907, the fair found a permanent home in Louisville, and in 1956 it settled into the Expo Center.
There’s no empty space at the fairgrounds; every inch is utilized. In Freedom Hall, the Horse Show is a spectacle of sequins and swagger. In the East Hall, there’s a reclaimed Bourbon barrel woodworking competition, with artistic Bourbon barrel heads and rocking chairs made of staves. The West Wing houses cows, sheep, goats, and poultry, along with an entire room dedicated to green-stage, potted, and dried tobacco.
But the soul of the Kentucky State Fair arguably lies in the South Wing, where a ham sells for $10.5 million — for real. Here’s where thousands of people compete in the Hobbies and Craft category, with homemade pies, soda-bread, paintings, baskets, and cakes frosted so ornately they could highlight a Las Vegas revue. And miniatures, of course. Tables and tables of painstakingly crafted dioramas, dollhouses, and “room boxes,” where every window shade, spoon, and carpet is scaled down to 1:12 perfection.
Elaborately decorated (albeit life-sized) cakes pay homage to Kentucky. Photo credit: Abby Ellin
In a given year, you’ll find tiny parlors, antique kitchens, and dollhouses so life-like you can practically inhale the wood polish. The craftsmanship is meticulous. And the competition is decidedly cutthroat.
The judging process takes place three days before the fair opens to the public. One judge walks around, Sherlock Holmes style, inspecting pieces for scale, creativity, the percentage of crafted items to purchased items, and whether it tells a viable story. Winners return to find a ribbon pinned beside their entry. Losers do not. A blue ribbon at the Kentucky State Fair means you’ve achieved something close to creative transcendence with polymer clay, acrylic paint, toothpicks and tweezers.
But a Best in Show is beyond.
Because miniatures are serious business in Kentucky. There’s the Great American Dollhouse Museum, in Danville, about a ninety minute drive south from Louisville. Two and a half hours north there’s the Kathleen Savage Browning Miniature Collection at the Kentucky Gateway Museum Center, in Maysville. The former, curated by Lori Kagan-Moore, is a love letter to small things: an 6,000-square-foot parallel universe of shrunken storefronts, colonial drawing rooms in tasteful mansions, and fantasy dioramas, all arranged in a whimsical narrative that Lori, a creative writer, designed herself.
The Browning Collection is more refined, akin to the revered Thorne Rooms at the Art Institute of Chicago. Its founder, Kathleen Savage Browning, known as Kaye, is a grande dame of the miniature world; this is where she stores pieces from the collection she’s amassed over the last five decades. This includes 18th century furniture handcrafted with 300 year old wood, and tiny necklaces made from real gold, pearls and gems. Kaye spent $50,000 shipping Spencer House, a reproduction of Princess Diana’s ancestral home, to Kentucky. With its marble Italianate floors, the museum is the height of elegance.
Lori plays a role in this story, and in Preston’s life. Kaye might have, too, if things had gone differently.
A 1940s woman takes a break from ironing, as seen in the Great American Dollhouse Museum. Photo credit: Jon Sachs
The Painted Room of “Spencer House,” Princess Diana’s ancestral home in 1:12 scale. The room features hand-painted wallpaper and paintings similar to those in the real mansion. The artists spent five weeks using size 00 and 000 brushes to paint, draw and gild the room. Photo credit: Abby Ellin
Long before he became persona non grata among certain circles, before TikTok turned him into a small-scale Banksy, Preston Poling was just a bored kid living in a Nicholasville, Kentucky trailer park.
Nicholasville is a small green suburb of Lexington, pleasant but lifeless, especially for a 14-year-old kid into Limp Bizkit and Korn. He, his mother and sister lived in a two-bedroom trailer with wood paneling and mismatched furniture.
His family were Jehovah’s Witnesses, evangelicals who ring doorbells and hawk magazines and refuse to salute the flag and preach the gospel to anyone who’ll listen. Their existence was joyless, with no celebrations or parties.
Preston hated all of it, which came out as a rebellion against authority. All authority.
At thirteen, Preston sits in math class, breezing through geometry. He finishes the problems before anyone else, then turns to the window, fidgeting in his chair and tapping his pencil to an invisible beat.
“Preston!” the teacher says. “Haven’t we been through this before?”
He stops tapping and looks around for other ways to amuse himself while his peers finish up. The kid on his left is obviously struggling, so Preston offers to help. He leans over and begins writing the answers himself. The kid is grateful, but the teacher’s not.
“You’re cheating!” she says. “You need to sit quietly at his desk and let him do his own work.”
Sit quietly? Impossible. Is she testing him? He doesn’t know and he doesn’t care. What he does know is that he’s sick of this BS. School’s a waste; he can learn on his own. He stands up, walks out of the front door, and never looks back.
His mother’s not happy about it, but what can she do? Preston has always had a mind of his own. But he can’t just lie around all day long. He has to get a job.
His grandfather, who lives a few trailers down, has a residential painting business and enlists Preston to work with him. Preston accepts. He adores his grandfather. They’re “two peas in a pod,” as he says. Yes, he’s highly religious, but he’s awesome. His grandfather takes him to rodeos and Monster Truck Shows and American Gladiator. And they build stuff together, like model cars and airplanes. Preston learns how to sand a piece of wood so it’s as smooth as silk.
His grandfather has “crazy scrap stuff” laying around. Preston transforms it into something useful or fun, like a self-propelled Go-kart that you can steer with your feet. “It’s fun to take worthless junk and turn it into something cool,” he says.
Not long after joining the business, Preston moves into a trailer next to his mom’s. It costs about $300 a month and he’s only earning $800 a month, but it’s worth it to have privacy. On the weekends his buddies come over and they play music together, mostly metal. Preston’s the lead guitarist, and he’s pretty good, if he says so himself.
When he’s not jamming with his buddies, he’s watching TV. His favorite is Frasier. Something about the father and son living together in that swanky apartment speaks to him. Frasier is successful and intelligent and unlike anyone Preston knows. Preston credits Frasier with teaching him about arias and art and wine.
In 2004, at 22, he meets a local girl named Brandi. She’s got blonde hair and blue eyes and has freckles all over her nose. They fall in love, and she moves into the apartment he’s moved into downtown. Premarital sex is forbidden to Jehovah’s Witnesses, and somehow, the elders discover that he’s living in sin. They bring him in for a meeting.
Preston stands in a dimly lit hall before three older men. “We hear you’re living with your girlfriend and you’re not married,” they say. “Is this true?”
Preston has two options: he can answer honestly, or he can lie. But they already know the truth, so why pretend? “I am,” he says, looking them square in the eye.
Those who don’t adhere to the rules experience “disfellowshipping,” a kind of formal exclusion from the community. This means that no one — not his family, not his grandfather — is allowed to talk to him. And they don’t.
Does it bother him? Sure it does. But it’s their decision. Sometimes they call him, but it’s a half-assed effort, and Preston doesn’t do half-assed relationships.
He and Brandi marry in 2004. No one from his family attends the wedding.
He wants to elevate his station in life, so four years later he gets his GED. Then he studies U.S. History with a minor in Germanic studies at Indiana University. For money, he takes a job as a corrections officer with juvenile offenders. He thought he had trouble with authority, but these kids make him look like Captain America. Most of them have drug addictions and are seriously violent. Preston’s constantly breaking up fights.
During the day he’s studying and at night he’s working and he catches a couple hours of sleep when he can – he’s miserable. Totally, one hundred percent, burnt.
“Why are you doing this to yourself?” Brandi asks.
Preston’s not sure.
So he quits college and the jail gig and begins running his own painting business fulltime. Meantime, he’s trying to figure out new ways to keep his speeding brain occupied. One night in 2017, an idea pops into his head. He keeps a collection of Frasier props and memorabilia in a display case in his home. Staring at the assemblage, he wonders: What if I recreate the stone fireplace in Frasier’s apartment — but in miniature?
He instinctively understands that 1:12 is proper scale — that is, one inch in miniature represents 12 inches of a real-life object.
A charge jolts through his body. Holy shit, this is fun! He decides to construct the entire Frasier set, building everything from scratch — the framed paintings, the sofa and chairs, the statuary. The lamps light up. The blinds open. There’s even a view of Seattle’s famous Space Needle.
Three years later, in the middle of the pandemic, Preston launches The Frasier Project, a Facebook group dedicated to all things Crane. People everywhere are going nuts, and they’re thrilled to have something to think about besides viral loads and death. The group’s 3,000 members post about the show and give him ideas on future artistic endeavors. One gifts him the Cranes’ Jack Russell Terrier, Eddie. Another sends him Fraiser’s piano in miniature.
Preston becomes a celebrity of sorts, adopting The Bearded Miniaturist as his nom de guerre. He enters the piece in the 2021 Kentucky State Fair, and it wins First Place.
At the urging of group members, he builds a model of Café Nervosa, the coffee shop where Frasier hangs out, and KACL Radio Studios, where Frasier records his show. Not long after, he and Brandi separate and he meets a new woman, Katie Sparacio, in the group. Katie has straight black hair that streams down her back and works as a celebrity wrangler for the New Jersey Horror and Film Festival. Frasier has been her savior, too. She and Preston become a couple in 2022. He’s finally found his people, and his calling.
Frasier’s apartment, replete with Seattle space needle skyline and Frasier’s Jack Russell terrier, Eddie. Photo credit: Abby Ellin
If Preston Poling’s a wannabe Frasier, Bob Haven is the real deal.
Oh, they don’t look alike — Bob, 74, is round and bespectacled, with sparse gray hair and a hearty mustache — but like Frasier, he’s super erudite and educated. His great great great great great great great great great great great great something, Richard Haven, arrived in Massachusetts in 1640 from the east coast of England. “He’s the reason we’re not English,” says Bob, with a touch of faux resentment. “Had things been different, I’d have had a very different accent.”
Bob is the third of four children: his mom was a homemaker, and his father worked as a purchasing agent for a local company in Nashua, NH. He was responsible for bringing Japanese YKK zippers into the United States. The Haven clan lives in a standard 1951 ranch house in Nashua that Bob’s parents built together entirely by hand, nail by nail.
His mother likes to try new trends. It’s she who brings in a radical design in Christmas trees. “We were on the cutting edge of having a silver aluminum Christmas tree,” says Bob. “That was a big deal in the late sixties because they didn’t shed.”
When Bob’s around seven, he realizes that his family is different from other families. He asks Santa for a toy, but instead he gets an arts and crafts project, like American Red Bricks, a precursor to LEGO, that he has to assemble himself. Bob loves to build things. His father’s often toiling in the garage, and Bob likes to help. He’ll take his father’s leftover wood scraps and turn them into some kind of design, like little houses set on driftwood that resemble fishing villages. He’s always in motion.
“Today I’d be coded as fidgety or obsessive compulsive because my hands always have to be doing something,” he says with a laugh.
Bob isn’t like kids in other ways, too. He’s not interested in sports, or girls; he’s turned on by beautiful objects. Textiles. Jewelry. Embroidery.
His mother teaches him to garden. She sits in a lawn chair and points to whatever flower needs attention. It’s his job to figure out what it wants. “She points, and I dig,” he says.
One summer when he’s in his early twenties, Bob volunteers at the Nashua Historical Society, lifting boxes and climbing ladders, when two high school volunteers come in. One proffers a two story Colonial dollhouse as if it’s a birthday cake. She’s been using a steak knife to cut balsa wood, but she’s having little luck.
Bob examines the piece. It looks like it barely survived the Revolutionary War. The pilasters, quoins, pediments, which go over the windows, are missing. “I’ll fix it,” Bob says.
That afternoon he carries the shell to his father’s workshop and spends the summer making the trim and applying it to the dollhouse. He carves a grandfather clock out of mahogany and pastes a watch face for the dial. This is his first foray into building miniatures, and he’s hooked. No matter what else he does from here on out, he’ll also build some kind of room box and other enclosures. He gravitates toward period-inspired rooms.
For Bob they’re aspirational. “I build rooms that I’d love to live in but can’t afford,” he says.
In 1973, Bob becomes an English teacher in Nashua, educating 8th graders on Hawthorne, Emerson and Poe. He fancies himself a stereotypical professorial persona: leather elbow patches, a pipe - “the whole nine yards.”
After grad school at Emerson College, in Boston, where he gets a master’s in community theater, he starts a theater for kids in Nashua. He does everything himself: picks the plays, directs them, designs and constructs the sets and sews all the costumes by hand. He immerses himself in the latter, taking classes on the construction of Kabuki costumes and Japanese embroidery. He flies to France to study tambour beading, a complex technique for attaching sequins, beads and other accoutrements to fabric, at Maison Lesage, a renowned haute couture embroidery house in Paris. He’s like the Bob Mackie of beading, lecturing around the world and promoting the art on TV.
Bob Haven is like the Bob Mackie of tambour beading, a technique for attaching sequins, beads and other accoutrements to fabric. Photo credit: Abby Ellin
“It’s like a dance of the hands, executed with the grace of the waltz and the precision of a tango,” he says in a news segment. “It’s like a Swiss watch. Everything has to be synchronized and perfectly aligned.”
He could be talking about himself. Bob is nothing if not precise.
When he’s 42 and running a costume shop and teaching at the University of Michigan, he meets a man named Christopher Silverthorn who works in retail sales. Bob has never really had a serious partner before, but this is different. By this time his father is gone, and his mother wants to visit for Christmas. So he has to officially come out.
“I’m gay and I always have been,” he tells her. “You’re welcome to come, but this is the situation.”
She’s reticent at first, but she bites her lip. Soon, she doesn’t even think about it.
Bob and Christopher move around the country as Bob takes jobs in theater departments at universities in Michigan, Illinois, and Kentucky, where he’s an associate professor of costume technology. Life is full and busy — “Busy as a one-armed paper hanger,” Bob likes to say. But he always makes time for miniatures. Tinkering with tiny worlds — worlds he can orchestrate and design — calms him.
In 2001, Bob and Christopher buy a place on Lemon Drop Lane, in Lexington. Like most of the streets in the city, it’s named after a racehorse. The home is exactly what you’d expect from a man whose life is dedicated to beauty and art: cottage-style with an impeccable lawn. Per his mother’s old directions, Bob does all the yard work himself. He hears her voice in his head as he plants lilies and irises and peonies and self-seeding ornamental basil. “Not there, there!”
Inside the house, it’s a wonderland, a shrine to Bob’s miniature creations: Forty-one room boxes, vignettes and lamp bases that he has built. Several have ribbons attached to them.
There’s a tiny closet with microscopic diamond and ruby necklaces, and a conservatory laden with roses and statues. There’s a sewing kit on a tiny canopy bed, and chandeliers that actually illuminate. There are even paintings the size of postage stamps that are, in fact, made from postage stamps.
Bob gestures to a functioning 2.5 inch Duncan Phyfe roll-top desk. He enjoys the challenge of trying to make something so small that out of context, it looks like a room you might find IRL. Nothing feels greater than when he shows someone a picture of his work and they’re shocked that it’s diminutive.
“Bingo!” he says. “It worked!”
In 2010, Christopher dies awaiting a liver transplant. In the spring of the following year, Bob is introduced to Jimmy Mawyer, through mutual friends. Jimmy has spent 40 years as a local director in the Miss America organization. The two become a couple, and Bob joins Jimmy conducting mock interviews with Kentucky contestants going to the Miss America.
Bob retires in 2014, but he doesn’t slow down. His fingers won’t let him. He takes piano lessons and teaches beading workshops out of his home studio and throws himself into the Louisville Miniature Club. Members have been cutting, painting, and gluing tiny baseboards for more than half a century. The club mostly attracts women in their 60s, 70s and 80s who are into hobbies and crafts — the sort of women who scrapbook as a verb. They meet on the first and third Sunday of each month in an activity room of the Beargrass Christian Church in Louisville. They typically work in one-inch, half-inch, and quarter-inch scale. In public, they wear pale blue polo shirts with the club’s name emblazoned on the front. Dues are $30 annually, and everyone must join the National Association of Miniature Enthusiasts (N.A.M.E) for $50.
The club runs several miniature shows a year, including a Christmas show, a display at a fundraising event for foster kids, and a couple of Farmers Markets at the church. But the biggest is the annual sale in October, which Bob has co-chaired for the last four years. In November, they hold a three day retreat at Clifty State Park in Madison, Indiana, overlooking the Ohio River. Everyone who works the annual sale is given one night free; typically, 18 to 20 people from three different miniatures clubs in the tri-state area take part.
“People will stay up all night working on stuff. That’s not out of the realm of possibility,” he says. They even sneak in wine and snacks.
In January, the group discusses the Kentucky State Fair, which takes place in mid-August. People are encouraged to submit their work. The bulk of the exhibits are not from club members, and Bob would like more of a club presence. “Even if it’s a single item, that’s fine,” he says. “It can be a room box or vignette.”
Bob’s not the Club president - “God forbid!” - but he’s co-chair of the Club’s annual show and sale, and a regular public face. When TV and radio stations come calling, Bob’s happy to go on air. And he definitely takes control.
For the last 26 years, the Club has sponsored the miniatures category at the state fair, assists with setup, and monitors the exhibit to make sure people don’t touch or pilfer pieces or ribbons. “We’re the only category of stuff that’s within reach of the general public,” Bob says. “We encourage people to put their work under plexiglass, but we can’t guarantee that things won’t get stolen. If it hasn’t been glued down it’s gonna walk.” Eventually, he brings a staple gun to secure the ribbons.
The Miniature Club doesn’t make the rules. That falls to the fair superintendent, the official in charge of all hobby exhibits. But the Club president recruits the judge. While the fair provides the ribbons, the Club doles out the cash. But for serious contenders, it’s not about money. It’s about bragging rights.
Bob Haven’s Wedgwood Room, which took Best in Show in 2021. Photo credit: Robert Haven
On a cold morning in January, Bob stands before the Club’s 35 members, clipboard in hand. “Who wants to submit?” he asks.
A few women raise their hands. Club members are encouraged to enter their own work into competition, and since he began competing in the state fair in 2021, Bob usually has two or three room boxes in rotation. Bob alone has won Best in Show in 2021, 2022 and 2023, for his jewel-box Wedgwood salon (complete with a Mozart string quartet and a hand-built harpsichord with inlay); the Diplomatic Reception Room—a richly paneled throne room whose intricate flooring and ceiling took months (“I built it because I knew exactly where it would go — over the commode in the guest bath”); and, in 2023, a Federal room he’d been imagining since 1985, finally realized after decades of collecting the right elements. “It started with a tiny porcelain tea set I bought in 1983,” he says. “It belonged in a Federal interior. Thirty years later, I could finally build the room it deserved.”
He chalks up his success to 50 years in the trenches. “When you’ve been doing something that long, you learn some skills,” he says modestly.
Everyone expects him to continue his streak.
And then Preston Poling comes along.
Bob Haven’s 2023 Best in Show-winning Federal Room Box. The room box features several Duncan Phyfe style furniture. All the rugs and upholsteries are hand stitched petit point on 40 count silk mesh. Photo credit: Robert Haven
Bob Haven’s 2022 Best in Show, The Diplomatic Throne Room, hanging over the commode in his human-size guest bathroom. “I hope people get the joke,” he says. Photo credit: Abby Ellin
In 2021, Preston receives an invitation to join the Louisville Miniature Club.
Preston’s not much of a joiner, but he likes the idea of being with other people doing the same thing he does. So one Sunday he drives to the Beargrass Christian Church and strolls down the hall to the activity room. It’s filled with women in their sixties, seventies and eighties, surrounded by boxes of lace trim and tiny hand-stitched curtains.
He keeps coming back every week. “I love those ladies,” says Preston. “They’re like little grandmas I spent every other Sunday with for years. I don’t always fit in, but it’s fun to go.”
But he doesn’t like the annual dues, or the fact that everyone’s required to join the National Association of Miniature Enthusiasts. And he refuses to wear the club-branded T-shirts at public outings. “Stupid,” he declares.
Members of The Louisville Miniature Club. Photo credit: Louisville Miniature Club
And they have different goals. The other members create traditional dollhouses and room boxes, but Preston is more inventive. He believes he’s at the forefront of a revolution to elevate miniatures from a craft to a “legitimate” art form. If he has a slogan, it’d be: “Think out of the room box.”
He’s asked to teach a flooring class and a class in dollhouse wiring and electrical. He’s not sure what he’ll say, but figures he can bullshit.
He demonstrates how solder seal connectors are used to join the ends of two or more wires together, and how when heat’s applied it melts the solder and the rubber filling, thus eliminating the need to learn to solder. He explains how to make solid electrical connections and how to wire lights and other accessories. “Almost any miniature item can be turned into a lamp with some simple drilling and wiring,” he tells them.
Everyone nods appreciatively. Bob Haven is very interested in the connectors. He even asks Preston to help create a Facebook group for the Miniature Club, which Preston does. But soon after, Preston senses some tension.
He thinks he understands it. Bob has long been the club’s star, the resident expert. Then Preston comes along, and the acclaim shifts. Bob had been “the man of the hour for the last hundred years,” and now attention is going elsewhere.
“Before I got there Bob was the go-to guy with questions and he taught classes and now, here I am, this new guy who has only been doing this for a very short time, answering questions, teaching classes, getting published in trade publications, winning, and going on a TV show,” he says.
Preston doesn’t take it personally. He knows what it’s like to feel protective of your craft — and to want people to see it the way you do.
Bob almost aspirates when he hears this. “No,” he says. “I was not jealous of him. He’s a narcissist. He thinks the world revolves around him.” Bob also says that Preston showed up to the Club meeting of his own accord. He was not invited.
Nancye Claypool, the club’s president of 14 years, believes the same. “Preston doesn’t always tell the truth,” she says. “He has caused nothing but issues.”
One afternoon in late 2022, Preston receives an email from someone in his Facebook group. The Canadian reality show “Best in Miniature” is casting its second season. Why doesn’t Preston audition?
It’s a pretty easy sell: Ten craftspeople competing to make the best miniature scale model of a dream home. The winner receives a residency with the prestigious International Guild of Miniature Artisans (IGMA), and $15,000.
Why not, indeed?
Preston shoots photos of his work over to the producers, and lo and behold, they get in touch. “Is there anything you can’t make?” the producers ask over Zoom.
“No,” he says. “I’ve got the talent and tools to make anything. I just need the desire.” He tells them that if he wins, he’ll use some of the prize money to help with animal rescue. Their ears perk up.
“I think they like my confidence or arrogance or whatever you want to call it,” he tells Katie.
He gets the gig. It’s intense but doable. In the first episode, contestants are given ten hours to build their dream home. In each subsequent episode, they face off in two challenges. In the first, they have to create one or more small items centered around a theme in a short period of time. In the second challenge, they’re given 8 hours to complete one room in their dream house. Each week, one of the contestants will be voted out of the dollhouse.
Over the course of eight episodes, Preston builds a house, designs and decorates the rooms, makes all the furniture, devises a pool with real water and landscaping around it, and adds sound effects, a functioning TV, a tree house and bomb shelter. He goes all the way to the finals, but in the end, he’s beaten by a woman who builds a Japanese hut.
Preston’s bummed, he can’t deny it. “I would like to win,” he says.
But the show serves a purpose. Commissions start pouring in from clients who want him to fix their dollhouses or build them a room box on a TV show. It’s nice, but it’s not enough.
By the time Preston decides to enter the 2023 Kentucky State Fair, he’s appeared in magazine articles and on TV and on podcasts and exhibited at shows around the country. Some are traditional shows for traditional miniatures: flowers, beds, bathtubs. But he also shows at places like WonderFest, a hobby convention in Louisville focusing on sci-fi, horror, and fantasy models. It’s all art to him. It’s all equally valid.
He submits two pieces. One is Cafe Nervosa; the other, for fun, is a “creepy sex dungeon,” featuring handcuffs, chains, a stained mattress, and blood swirling around a shower drain. He calls it “The Stockholm Room.”
Preston’s “creepy dungeon” that wasn’t allowed to compete in the 2023 Kentucky State Fair. Photo credit: Preston Poling
One afternoon Preston’s volunteering at the fair, helping people assemble their displays before opening day, when, according to Preston, his phone pings. It’s Nancye Claypool, the Miniature Club president, who’s out of town.
“You’ve gotta remove it,” she says.
“Remove what?” he asks.
“Your submission. It’s inappropriate.”
“Who says I have to take it down?”
“The fair board.”
Nancye disputes this version of events. She says she does not recall talking to Preston by phone. She does concede that the state fair should have had a contact person call him and tell him that they were pulling his piece.
“If we had known what it was, we wouldn’t have accepted it,” she says.
This reaction doesn’t come as a shock to Preston; he knows the piece is risqué. But that’s the point. He’s an artist. His job is to provoke. Still, he’s furious.
The fair superintendent is there, so Preston approaches her. “Why didn’t you just say something to me directly?”
“Come with me,” she says, leading him over to Bob. “You guys need to sort this out.”
Preston asks Bob what he can remove from the box to make it appropriate. The handcuffs? The riding crop?
Nothing. The entire concept is improper.
Steam practically comes out of Preston’s beard. He doesn’t like the way this whole thing has gone down.
“It wasn’t a surprise, but that someone in my own club would back stab me and go to the president of the club and make her do his dirty work,” he says.
Bob is unmoved. “Creepy dungeon, my foot!” he says. “It’s an S&M bedroom.”
Fuming, Preston packs up the dungeon with the handcuffs and chains and blood swirling around the shower, and makes a vow to himself: Next year, things will be different. Next year, he’ll build something so subtle, so covert, that only some people will understand.
He likes to do things like this, anyway, just to amuse himself. In the backroom of Café Nervosa, for example, which nabs a first place ribbon in 2023, he’s placed a Playboy magazine next to a pack of smokes. No one else notices it, but he knows it’s there, and that’s all that counts.
The backroom at Cafe Nervosa, which took First Place at the State Fair in 2023. See if you can find the hidden Playboy. Photo credit: Abby Ellin
Preston spends the rest of 2023 and half of 2024 in full work mode. During the day, he paints houses and at night and on weekends he’s in his studio. X-Acto knives, hole punches, rulers, calipers, wood, acrylic paints, paper and wire are scattered around him.
He attends Miniature Club meetings, too, but he’s uninspired. It’s the same old stuff month after month. No one’s doing art.
Bob, meanwhile, is happy as a clam. He’s teaching beading workshops and taking piano lessons, and building his own room boxes, and helping Miss Kentucky contestants.
Their ragdoll cat, Bijoux, wakes him up at 6 every morning. After downing a cup of coffee, Bob strolls into his converted garage. He sits under a magnifying light sewing sequins on a kimono, or stitching a pillow, or painting a table with bristles the size of an eyelash. Preston Poling is the last thing on his mind.
Bob’s excited about the 2024 state fair. Nancye Claypool has invited Lori Kagan-Moore, curator of the Great American Dollhouse Museum, to judge. She thinks she’ll be fantastic.
Bob Haven in his garage/studio, working away. Photo credit: Abby Ellin
In the early afternoon of August 12, 2024, Lori Kagan-Moore, dressed in black a printed tunic and yoga pants, heads into the convention center. She’s got judging to do. There are 10 submission categories, among them dollhouses, room boxes, vignettes, fairy garden, small scale, four youth categories and “I Did it My Way,” which is left to the artist’s imagination.
Lori is in her late 60s, and she’s spent her career peering into tiny windows and appreciating the quiet poetry of scale. Originality is important to her - specifically, that each piece was done by the person who submitted it. She’ll take points off if it’s done by another artist, and even more if there’s commercial filler.
She moves slowly, clipboard in hand, reading the title cards, inspecting the floorboards. She peers with her reading glasses inside the kitchen in a dollhouse. Racks of dishes and pots and pans hang from the ceiling. The work is flawless, but it’s substantially bigger than the mandated 1:12. Hmmm.
The piece next to it, a study in a Tudor home, is the right size. But when she looks closer, it’s clear that many of the items are prefabricated. They’re not made by hand. How can she compare a beautiful entry built mostly from a kit, to a piece built from scratch that’s the wrong scale? The guidelines are dreadfully unclear.
Then she moves on to the next entry. It’s a basic set, really, an office scene with a couch, desk and computer monitor. The size is appropriate. She likes its clean lines. It’s refreshing. True, it’s a little sparse, but it’s original.
Eight hours later, after she’s gone through every item and taken notes, she awards ribbons. She pins a First Place and Best in Show on the Walking Dead, and a third place ribbon on the office scene. She continues on her way, unaware that she’s just unleashed a firestorm.
The Walking Dead took First Place and Best in Show in 2024. Photo credit: Abby Ellin
The Louis Vuitton steamer trunk won nothing. Photo credit: Abby Ellin
Bob usually arrives at the fair early, sometimes at the crack of dawn. He’s excited to see if he’s won anything, and he’s got press to do. The local TV station does a live feed from the miniatures section, that’s how popular they are.
He surveys the area and finds his three pieces. A second and two first-place ribbons, but not Best in Show. That’s given to the Walking Dead set. Bob’s surprised. Best in Show? For a rendering of a TV program?
“Technically, you should get permission from the copyright owner to use those images,” he says. Beyond the legal issues, where’s the originality? As far as Bob is concerned, Best in Show should have gone to a dollhouse not done by him with a magnificently landscaped lawn. That’s the best piece. What was the judge thinking?
As for the office piece, whatever. It’s nothing fabulous. He moves on.
After the fun of seeing people’s reactions, and the pride in taking Best in Show, and the fact that the Casting Couch is such a hit online, Preston and Katie go out for celebratory pizza at Danny Mac’s. Life returns to normal. Sorta.
Because three days after the Casting Couch goes viral, his phone pings maniacally. Friends and fans are trying to find his office scene at the fair, but they can’t locate it. “Where’d it go?” one asks.
Preston’s confused. “It’s right where it was when I left it, on the far corner of the table.”
“No, it’s not.” They send him a photo of the empty space.
Preston’s heart pounds. Has some weird-ass stalker stolen his piece? So he does what anyone would do: He posts on Instagram.
First my build goes viral, then it goes missing!!
Just a warning, if you were planning on going to the Kentucky State Fair to enjoy my exhibit please wait. I've had several messages informing me that it isn't there. I'm not sure if it was stolen or moved or REMOVED or what. No one has reached out to me to let me know anything, it's just....gone. Stay tuned for more info.
Preston puts out an APB on Instagram. Photo credit: Preston Poling/Instagram
Again, social media goes wild:
“They did such a disservice by removing it because it was literally what everyone was talking about at exhibits last night.”
“They took it down - it’s all over the news!”
“I hope you get this back!”
He and Katie race over to the Expo Center. It’s true: The piece is nowhere to be found. His Best in Show and First Place ribbons have also vanished.
Preston grabs two state troopers. “Someone stole my submission,” he says.
“Which one?”
“The Casting Couch.”
The officer’s face brightens. “We saw that on Facebook!” one says. “We’ll find it.”
Preston, Katie and the cops hunt down the superintendent.
“The piece has been… temporarily removed,” she says carefully. “There were some concerns.”
“What kind of concerns?” Preston asks. He’s trying to stay calm, but he can feel his blood pressure elevating.
“Concerns with its nature.”
“Can I keep my ribbons?” he asks. “And can I have the piece back?”
“Yes,” she says. “You earned them before we knew what you did. You can get your piece when the fair is over.”
The Fair eventually returns the Casting Couch, and his ribbons are reinstated. But the damage is done. Or maybe it’s magic.
The Louisville Courier Journal picks up the story. So does NPR, AOL, Yahoo, Vice, The NY Post, The Independent and a slew of local radio shows.
Lori’s behind the cash register at the Dollhouse Museum when she learns what happened. She’s gobsmacked. She had no idea it was referencing porn.
“Would you have known what it is?” she asks her husband.
“No.”
“If I had known,” she says, “I would have gone to Nancye Claypool and said, ‘I've given a third place ribbon to something that's salacious. Is that an issue?’”
She calls Preston. They’ve never really spoken before, but she wants him to know she had nothing to do with the piece’s removal.
"I awarded the room box a ribbon because the simplicity was refreshing,” she says. “The build and quality was very nice.”
She understands that he wasn’t trying to trick her or make her look foolish. And she doesn't back pedal on the Walking Dead winning Best in Show. “It was out of the box and the deterioration was expertly done and the build quality is amazing,” she says. “I'd like to put it on display at my museum if you ever wish to sell it."
Preston posts about their exchange:
I was very happy that she didn't take offense and that she was able to laugh about the entire thing, as was the superintendent of the fair The judge is the director of the Great American Dollhouse Museum in Danville Kentucky they have a Facebook page and I encourage everyone to visit (I've been there several times) and show her and her business some LOVE!
He eats up the attention, giving interviews whenever he’s asked.
“I went with something that could slide under the radar,” he says in an interview with “Honky Talkin,” a weekly talk show and country music showcase held at the Whirling Tiger bar in Louisville. Preston is its first non-musical guest.
The host, Tyler Lance Walker Gill, is clearly on Team Preston. He wears a cowboy hat and silver jewelry. Two shoulder-length braids dangle on both sides of his head. Initially, he didn’t know what the Casting Couch was about, either. “I make jokes about ‘please come sit on my casting couch’ every week, and it went over my radar,” he says.
“The sweat was a last minute add,” Preston tells him. “I really tried to make it as inconspicuous as possible. If you didn’t know what it was, I didn’t want there to be any way to Google it, to identify it. But I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I didn’t put an ass sweat stain on it.”
Preston’s able to laugh about it, but the experience has left him raw. “They didn’t even tell me face to face,” he says. “They just pulled it.”
When the hubbub dies down, Preston receives a text from Nancye Claypool, who becomes president of N.A.M.E next July. They want him to resign. “I think it’s for the best and we appreciate it,” she writes.
Preston doesn’t argue, but he’s kind of surprised. He figures they’d be grateful for all the publicity he’s brought the Club. For the attention he’s brought to miniatures, period.
“We don’t want bad publicity,” Nancye sniffs. “I thought from the very beginning that he would not fit the Louisville Miniature Club. One of our members is very religious, and she liked him. But once she found out about the Casting Couch piece she would have had nothing to do with him. I would have lost four members if he stayed on and I can’t have that.”
Preston leans into his rebel-with-a-cause status. When people see the Bearded Miniaturist logo on his truck, a stenciling of a man with a moustache and beard in sunglasses and skullcap, they honk or flag him down. They stop him in restaurants and cafes, just to shake his hand.
“You’re the Casting Couch dude!” they say. Sometimes they ask for a Selfie. He always obliges.
He co-launches an alternative in The Miniaturist Social Club, which meets monthly at Ms. Audrey’s Crafting Emporium in the Highlands. All sizes and genres of miniatures are embraced: dollhouses, 3D printing, Warhammer, spaceships, cars, tanks, resin figures. Membership is free, no T-shirt’s required. “I’m a little competitive and petty,” he admits.
The twelve hobbyists who show up to the first meeting see the removal of The Casting Couch as proof that the miniatures establishment is threatened by new voices. They believe a conspiracy is afoot. They yammer about the situation while tending to their creations.
Anything goes at the Miniaturist Social Club, including Princess Jasmine. The piece was turned away from the Kentucky State Fair miniatures because it’s Barbie-sized, rather one inch, half inch or quarter inch scale. Photo credit: Abby Ellin
“I don’t like it,” says Hobert Dalton, 54, who manages a wine and spirits shop in Louisville, and goes by “Hobes.” He was once a member of the Miniature Club, too — that's where he met Preston — he defected before Preston left — and he smells something rotten in Louisville.
“Bob seemed to be jealous of Preston and upset that Preston ruined his winning streak,” he says. “How can you be the person in charge of setting up the displays and telling people who can and can’t compete when you yourself are in control of the gate? And yet you are also participating and competing in the fair?”
Ms. Audrey’s Crafting Emporium, home to Preston’s competing Miniaturist Social Club. “I’m a little competitive and petty,” he admits. Photo credit: Abby Ellin
The Whirling Tiger, the bar where the Honky Talkin’ radio show is broadcast, invites Preston to display the Casting Couch. Hundreds of fans show up to celebrate its “release from prison.” Preston sells merch: a magnet ($25); the couch, stain included ($65) and the entire Casting Couch room box ($450).
And he’s got something sensational planned for 2025.
Preston Poling with signed Casting Couch merch. Photo credit: Abby Ellin
August, 2025. Code Red in the miniatures gallery. Everyone’s on high alert. They know Preston has something up his sleeve; maybe he’s even entered under a pseudonym. Who knows what this “loose cannon,” as Bob puts it, is capable of?
Bob and some Club members are setting up, arranging the 98 entries on various display tables. There’s a rendition of Piggly Wiggly, a K-Mart parking lot, a studio apartment sliced out of a Coke can, in the “Repurposed containers” category. There are fairies and trolls and high-end dollhouses on loan from Kaye Savage Browning, this year’s judge. (Lori Kagan-Moore was not asked back.)
Preston arrives with two pieces. One is the “suicide scene” from the film Full Metal Jacket, replete with blood splattered on a bathroom wall. The other is a riff on an adult-themed meme of the porn star Piper Perri sitting on a couch in pigtails, surrounded by five Black men in T-shirts and underwear. In Preston’s version, a framed portrait of the “Girl with the Pearl Earring” replaces Perri, and paintings of five Black men in gilded picture frames hang on the walls.
The original Piper Perri meme on which Preston based his submission. Photo credit: Courtesy of img flip meme generator
…And Preston’s version. Photo credit: Preston Poling
But before he can even set it down, a woman stops him at check-in. “I have to ask you to leave,” she says. “I’m sorry. I’m just doing my job.”
Huh?
According to the general rules, a professional makes most of their income from the work they’re exhibiting, while a hobbyist only sells a few pieces. Preston has a website and sells his products and services out of a brick-and-mortar storefront. This makes him a professional. “It was in the general rules for fair regulations for exhibiting, it was not in the miniature things,” says Bob. “They clarified their definition of what constitutes a hobby as opposed to professional.”
“I’m not!” Preston insists. “I do not make my income from my miniatures.”
Preston whips out his phone and begins filming Bob, who’s standing right there, in a light blue polo shirt, shorts, and eyeglass straps. “Stop!” says Bob, putting his palm out, talk-to-the-hand style. “I don’t give you permission to film me.”
Preston flips off the camera but the audio remains. Things get heated.
Bob: “The Fair Board decided that they needed to have some regulations. Not me.”
Preston: “Other people sell online. How many have Etsy accounts?”
Bob: “I don’t care what any of those people do. I’m only concerned, and we’re only concerned, with what happens here. If you’ve got an issue with them, take that up with the Fair Board.”
Preston: “I don’t have an issue with them at all. I think the whole thing’s bullshit, these rules you want to make.”
Bob: “Well then, if it’s bullshit, Preston, why do you want to be part of the bullshit?”
Preston: “I don’t want to be part of your bullshit.”
Bob: “And we don’t want you to be part of our bullshit either. So take your stuff, and if you want to do commercial stuff, get yourself a commercial vendor space in that part of the hall.”
Preston: “Where was the email sent out to people registered?”
Bob: “Nothing was sent out. I didn’t discover it until I read the whole thing. It didn’t come out anywhere before. I always read the general directions, because they always change things. I read the whole thing and then read the description of miniatures. But nobody got any information ahead of time.”
Preston: “So anyone in miniatures that sells anything can’t enter?”
Bob: “No, that’s not what I’m saying, and you know that’s not what I’m saying. A professional does something in exchange for money.”
Preston: “So no one can make any money?”
Bob: “No one else has an external space or markets as a small business. Just take your stuff and go. You’re not gonna win it. It’s listed under small business on Google. We knew you were coming.”
Preston grabs his pieces and goes.
Bob wins two First Place ribbons in two categories, including one for “Man Cave of the Enlightenment.” It features four volumes of leather-bound Shakespearean sonnets in 1:12 scale, which are readable with a magnifying glass.
Bob’s 2025 entry, “Man Cave of the Enlightenment,” which wins first prize in room boxes. Photo credit: Abby Ellin
That enrages Preston even more. What about the fact that Bob, too, has a website? Why isn’t he considered a professional?
“I make some little wicker pieces and I do some little plants and some books and folding screens and generic little pieces like that, but I don't sell room boxes,” says Bob. “I don't have a store. I don't have a business. There's a difference between supporting your hobby and basically selling off stuff that you don't use, as opposed to marketing yourself as someone who will build you a custom dollhouse.”
On August 10, four days before the fair officially opens, Preston posts his interaction with Bob to his 10,100 Instagram followers. "Well, there ya have it folks...the drama, excitement and controversy continues.... I'm BANNED from submitting entries at the Kentucky State Fair!”
The press eats it up.
Miniatures experts weigh in.
“There are people who are making miniatures and selling on Etsy,” says Darren Scala, a curator who runs miniatures auctions in New York. “Some might call them professionals, but what defines an amateur or professional? What defines a professional artist? There are tons of people who have jobs and enter their work in contests. I wouldn’t call Preston a professional. I’d call him a hobbyist who has gotten a following.”
He says it’s “over the top ridiculous” that Preson was thrown out. “This is a state fair!” he says. “It’s not the FBI. Preston’s a provocateur. That’s how he markets himself.”
After a Social Club meeting, Preston, Katie, Hobes and Audrey Arcelli, of Ms. Audrey’s fame, wander over to the ramen place across the street from Ms. Audrey’s. The windows fog with steam, and the air smells like soy and garlic. They squeeze into a booth, shoulders touching, and the clatter of chopsticks fills the pauses between their words.
Preston leans over his bowl, slurping noodles as he talks. “When you do something, you want to be able to show it,” he says, wiping broth from his lip. “You’re proud of the thing you’ve created, and you want to share it. Everybody deserves that right—to have their work seen. You can make it out of a shoebox and toothpicks, or the most exquisite thing you’ve ever seen. Whether those two belong in the same category or not, fine, that’s a conversation. But no one should be excluded.”
Hobes jabs his chopsticks into his bowl, noodles sliding off. He’s fired up. “The whole reason we created this club was to be inclusive of everything, as long as it’s mini.”
Katie rolls her eyes, her tone half amusement, half exasperation. “The thing with the Casting Couch was ridiculous,” she says. “It was a sweat stain. A normal bodily fluid. It’s not like it was — a sexual fluid.”
Preston laughs, shaking his head. “I recreated a meme that just happened to come from a porn site,” he says. “To me, it was about pop culture. It was funny. That’s all. Nothing to do with porn.”
He calls Bob a Karen, and Katie nearly chokes on her noodles laughing.
Preston insists he’s not a perv. Katie smirks. “You are,” she says. “But that’s what I like about you.”
Outside, the neon light from the restaurant sign flickers against the glass. They linger there a while longer, the bowls empty, the conversation meandering between jokes and frustrations, until the night cools around them.
A few weeks later, Preston’s work goes on display at Awry Brewing, in Louisville. People drift through the brewery with pints of Irish Red — called Fair Warning — in hand, circling the dungeon, the Casting Couch, the Full Metal Jacket, Walking Dead and Piper Perri like sacred relics. There are hoots, laughter, and the occasional “Hot damn!” It’s the kind of attention Preston’s been chasing all along: a crowd that sees his work and gets it.
A few weeks after that, The Pony, a strip joint in Lexington, displays his pieces. He’s commissioned to build a miniature honoring Larry Flynt’s birthday on November 1.
When the Miniature Club hears of this, they’re horrified. “Our founder did not intend for Club members to exhibit in a strip club,” Nancye says. “She would be appalled to know that someone who was once a member exhibited his stuff in a strip club. In my opinion, a strip club is not a place for miniatures. Are you that desperate for attention?”
Bob Haven insists his disdain has nothing to do with the fact that Preston won ribbons, but with Preston’s behavior and Preston himself. “He wants to bend the rules to fit his desire and what he thinks it should be,” he says. Bob’s just there to ensure the measurements on a room box or dollhouse fit within the parameters. He’s just enforcing the rules the State Fair conceives. And he has nothing to do with picking the judge. That’s all Nancye Claypool.
Years earlier, long before Preston was even a wad of gum on his shoe, someone entered a dollhouse filled with dismembered baby dolls in hanging pots. It was also removed.
Bob shakes his head. He refuses to engage in Preston’s juvenile antics. “I'm not going to get into a pissing contest with an adolescent,” he says. “That's why he had to out himself like an eighth grader. It's no good doing something if nobody knows you, right? It was all premeditated. He did it on purpose to see how far he could get with it. And he was just waiting for them to pull it so that he could then use that as publicity to make himself look like the victim.”
He throws his hands up in disgust. He doesn’t have time to unpack Preston’s psyche. “There is baggage there, and it ain’t Louis Vuitton.”
These days, Preston’s Miniaturist Social Club meets once a month at Miss Audrey’s, where the tables are crowded with half-finished dollhouses, dragons, and bottles of red wine. The air reeks of paint thinner and ambition. Preston moves through the room with a beer in one hand and a glue gun in the other, cracking jokes, tossing ideas, spinning stories. He’s still prohibited from entering his work in the State Fair, technically. But every so often someone asks what he’s working on next year.
He just grins. “Oh, I’ve got plans,” he says.
No matter what you make, it’s better with wine. Photo credit: Abby Ellin
Across town, in the activity room of Beargrass Christian Church, the old Miniature Club carries on as it always has. Same folding tables. Same pastel polos. No one mentions the Casting Couch.
But August comes fast in Kentucky. The entry forms go out again, the ribbons are pressed and ready, and somewhere in Louisville, a man with a beard and a mischievous streak is hunched over his workbench, carving something small and dangerous out of balsa wood. Something he probably shouldn’t.
Because the thing about Preston Poling is — he never really quits.
And the thing about the Kentucky State Fair is — it always needs a little drama.
Abby Ellin is the author of "Duped: Double Lives, False Identities and the Con Man I almost Married," the executive producer and host of the podcast "Impostors: The Commander" (season 2), and producer/reporter on The New York Times Presents documentary "To Live and Die in Alabama." She is a frequent contributor to the NY Times and a former columnist for the New York Times Sunday Money and Business section. Her greatest claim to fame is naming Karamel Sutra for Ben and Jerry's.
