As part of the Town of Bovina’s Bicentennial Celebration, Brooke Alderson enlisted a group of ten local artists to create paintings of Bovina Landmarks. The artists were invited to paint their own interpretations of photographs of different Bovina buildings that are no longer in existence or have been altered. The resulting ten paintings were mounted on easels by Brooke and Scott Hill and were displayed throughout the hamlet during the Celebration at the site where the original structure stood (or still stands).
Over the next few months, I will be doing a series of entries highlighting the buildings and the paintings. The paintings are on display at the Bovina Public Library, where you can order prints of any that catch your fancy for $80, all proceeds going to the library. And stay tuned for an auction of the original works being planned for this fall.
Bovina Methodist Church, painted by Rick Mills
Methodism in Bovina was of long standing, though for many years, there was no organized congregation. They met in any available dwellings, schoolhouses or even barns. The main name in Bovina Methodism in its early years was Alexander Brush, Bovina’s early settler. For years services were held in his house where he preached the service.
Methodists were not popular in Bovina in the town’s early years. They once found the school house locked against them, though a vote did finally allow them to use it. In 1848, the Methodists resolved to build a church on land given to them by Alexander Brush for that purpose. The building was completed in 1849 at a cost of $1,397.50. The dedication took place August 22nd, 1849, though not without incident. The pastor of the Bovina Associate Presbyterian Church, Reverend John Graham, received an invitation to attend the dedication and consecration of the new Methodist church. In his pulpit, Graham strongly condemned this stating “the consecrating of churches, grave-yards and other things was heathenish and popish…”
Until April 1871, the Andes and Bovina Methodist congregations comprised had one pastor. They were divided that year, each with its own pastor. In 1865, membership was at fifty, by 1875 it was sixty-three, with usual attendance of about 100. A parsonage was purchased for $2,000 in 1871 and in 1877 the church was repaired and renovated on the inside, with a capacity to seat three hundred.
As the new century dawned, however, the membership numbers for the Bovina Methodist church fell and in 1916, the church began sharing its pastor with the Andes congregation again. The last trustees of the church, John Blair, Charles Hafele and David C. Worden, sold the church building and parsonage in November 1921. The church building property was sold to William Archibald for $775. The local paper reported “it is a number of years since Bovina Center has had a resident Methodist pastor to occupy the parsonage, and the congregation has become so small that services have not been held regularly and it has become a burden on the small membership to maintain a church organization.” The parsonage next door was sold at the same time.
Archibald announced plans to tear down the church, hiring David Worden to dismantle the church. The church did not come down for a few years. Life-long Bovina resident Jack Hilson remembered roller-skating in the church building and Celia Coulter recalls her sister Ruth having played basketball there. The church was torn down in April of 1926. Worden used the timbers to build a barn on his farm on Reinertsen Hill Road. That building no longer exists. Archibald then built his home, which still stands today. In 1930, the Bovina Community Hall was built across the street from the Archibald home.
The Artist
Richard Kirk Mills - I have at various times narrated, interpreted, represented, (re)designed and abstracted the landscape. After fourteen years of collaborative public eco-artwork I built a house in Bovina and returned to painting, working from the everyday, familiar places around me, seeking to create images that are at once subtle and iconic. I hope that the years of revealing the often hidden cultural and environmental history of place informs my recent work; reflecting a deeper feeling for layers of landscape and memory. Ultimately, I am trying to make good paintings from my experience.
I earned an MFA from City College, drove a taxi, worked as a master printer, taught at the Pratt Graphics Center and was professor of art at Long Island University for 28 years.
More work can be seen at: https://richardkirkmills.net/home.html and at Longyear Gallery in Margaretville and in NYC at Blue Mountain Gallery.
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