Kentucky State Fair food offers deep-fried marshmallows
One of the new food items at the Kentucky State Fair are deep-fried marshmallows from International Catering. Here’s a look at how they are made.
- Kentucky miniaturist Preston Poling, known as “The Bearded Miniaturist,” has been banned from the 2025 Kentucky State Fair miniatures competition.
- The ban follows controversy surrounding Poling’s 2024 entry, “The Casting Couch,” a miniature depicting a pornography set.
- Poling says he will display his 2025 creations at a different venue.
- Poling has a history of submitting controversial miniatures, including a “risqué dungeon” in 2023.
Kentucky State Fairgoers will have to wait to see Kentucky’s most notorious miniaturist artist’s 2025 fair entries.
Preston Poling, aka “The Bearded Miniaturist” says he was banned from the 2025 Kentucky State Fair miniatures competition.
Poling went viral in the 2024 after submitting a miniature based on “The Casting Couch,” which is a depiction of a popular pornography set. The piece initially won a third-place ribbon at the 2024 Kentucky State Fair for its craftsmanship in the “I Did it My Way” category but later was deemed inappropriate. It was initially unclear on Aug. 11 if Poling was banned for the subject of this year’s entries or as a result of “The Casting Couch” controversy of 2024.
“Well, there ya have it folks…the drama, excitment and controversy continues…. I’m BANNED from submitting entries at the Kentucky State Fair!,” Poling posted on his Instagram page on Aug. 10.
“Don’t worry,” Poling continued. “You’ll get the entire story soon and it’s a GOOD ONE! Believe me…. I’m going to make SURE you get an opportunity to see all the cool (stuff) that I’ve been working on for this year’s fair (even if it’s at a different venue).”
Poling and the Kentucky State Fair media team did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Aug. 11.
The Courier Journal reached out to Poling earlier this summer to see whether his experience with “The Casting Couch” entry in 2024 would influence his 2025 Kentucky State Fair entries.
“It has definitely influenced my entries (maybe not in the way that they had hoped),” Poling told The Courier Journal in an Instagram message in early August. “I have a couple entries this year, so we’ll see if the fair can play nice, or if they wanna go for round 2.”
The Bearded Miniaturist saga began in 2023 when Poling submitted a miniature build of a risqué dungeon and it was disqualified before the judging process began.
“To be fair and completely transparent, that build was not subtle,” Poling told The Courier Journal in 2024. “It was a sexy dungeon with chains, and there was a little tiny hit of blood around the drain, and there was a stain on the mattress.”
That’s how the idea for “The Casting Couch” came about. When fair officials deemed the dungeon inappropriate, he asked what he could remove from the build to make it fit for the fair. By that point, though, it didn’t matter how many chains or stains he removed, the concept was deemed inappropriate for the fair.
So, he decided to sneak an unassuming design in for 2024.
“What could I build that people would know is totally sexually related, but if you don’t know it, there is absolutely no way you would ever know what it is,” Poling previously told The Courier Journal.
The build, which featured a mundane sofa with a bit of a sweat stain on the middle cushion, was not overtly lewd.
While Poling has certainly turned heads in the past couple years with his suggestive builds at the Kentucky State Fair, he’s also well-known in the miniatures community for his creativity and attention to detail. He competed in the second season of the television show “Best in Miniature” and was a finalist.
He also won two other ribbons at the 2024 Kentucky State Fair for miniatures of the popular children’s book “Goodnight Moon” and the hit television series “The Walking Dead.”
This story may be updated.
Reach Courier Journal reporter Maggie Menderski at mmenderski@courier-journal.com
