No one will argue that KFW grants provide an important source of financial support to Kentucky’s feminist artists. However, grants have also proved to be a powerful form of validation for many KFW grant recipients.

For example, Sarah Lyon, a photographer from Louisville, proposed a unique project that combined her art form with her interest in motorcycles, and a desire to reconnect with women who had been important in her life whom now lived scattered throughout the United States. Sarah planned on riding alone, taking only what would fit on her bike, and experimenting with new photography subjects as she made her cross-country trip. Not only did receiving the grant from KFW validate Sarah’s work as a photographer, it also validated her project: the ideology of independence and self-sufficiency that come with a woman artist riding across the country alone on a motorcycle.

When Sarah returned from the 80 day, 8,900-mile journey she was offered her first solo photography exhibit at a local gallery. Receiving a grant from KFW had brought status to her work, and in turn helped her get the exhibit. She was recognized in the newspaper, and ultimately the photography exhibit propelled her photography to a new level of respect.

The exhibit, called "where are you going where have we been," attracted a diverse mix of people. Sarah reflects, "This body of work spoke to a larger audience than just artists and photographers. It got people to come to a gallery who wouldn’t normally go to a gallery—motorcyclists, women’s rights advocates, and travel enthusiasts." In this case, the grant from KFW played a key role in bringing diverse members of a community together in order to look at photographs that would stir conversation about women and independence, travel and curiosity about places other than your own.

Not only were members of the Louisville community affected by the artwork, but Sarah impacted people and paved the road for social change in other communities as well. Throughout the journey the carburetor on Sarah’s bike kept breaking. She would stop and borrow tools at bike shops in order to fix it. She was knowledgeable about her bike and fixed it easily. The men working at the bike shops were impressed with her knowledge. "Hopefully," she says, "I left them with good ideas about women riders. One guy even offered me a job." She continues, "The way you conduct yourself in settings where there aren’t any other women, by learning, asking questions and doing things on your own—that’s where my feminism comes from."
KFW’s grant to Sarah Lyon worked to validate the artist and the project by funding it, helped her get a gallery show for her work, brought different members of the community together to view the work, and allowed a young woman to spread her feminism in bike shops across the country.