KUTZTOWN (AP) — Stars. Not hex signs, but stars.

Patrick Donmoyer, 23, has spent more than a year documenting and photographing 400 examples of such celestial iconography, a form of folk art painted on Pennsylvania barns over the last three centuries.

To Donmoyer, these stars matter as emblems of Pennsylvania German cultural identity.

He is a true fan, albeit an academic one, who also believes that what these artistic creations are actually called matters for reasons of historical accuracy and meaning.

Donmoyer is originally from Lebanon County, about 20 miles east of Harrisburg. He now lives about 10 miles northeast of Reading, near Fleetwood in Rockland Township, Berks County, just over 50 miles east of Harrisburg and just under 50 miles northwest of Philadelphia.

Donmoyer works at the nearby Pennsylvania German Cultural Heritage Center at Kutztown University, about five miles north of his new home.

A 2009 graduate of Kutztown University, majoring in studio art and fine craft and minoring in Pennsylvania German studies, he has received a $5,000 research scholarship from the Peter Wentz Farmstead Society, based in Worcester, less than 20 miles northwest of Philadelphia.

While his current focus is the Berks County area that surrounds Reading, he hopes to eventually expand his study of barn stars into neighboring counties and publish a book that could be easily enjoyed by the public.

Standing on the academic shoulders of earlier Pennsylvania German scholars, Alfred Shoemaker and Don Yoder, in particular, Donmoyer credits them as figures who inspired him on a mission to catalog barn stars.

"In Pennsylvania, we are experiencing enormous shifts in our local landscape, and many historical and culturally significant features are rapidly disappearing," Donmoyer said. "As our landscape shifts, so does our cultural heritage and beliefs. The most threatened aspects of the landscape are the historic farms because of development."

Through his work, Donmoyer hopes to help preserve and share the artistic beauty of barn stars and educate others about a type of folk art that often has been clouded by controversy.

"The problem is we don't have primary sources on the true meaning and content of these elaborate designs that were painted on barns," Donmoyer said, sitting outside at a picnic table and in front of the Sharidan family barn (circa 1855), boasting a stone foundation and timber-framed, red-painted walls adorned with stars. The barn is located near Kutztown University, in Maxatawny Township.

Popularized as hex signs in the early 20th century, the barn stars were associated with the idea of protecting barns from witchcraft and became a commercial commodity in promoting the geographic area for tourists, according to Donmoyer.

"Meanings were invented to attract customers, and this invented lore assigned a specific meaning to each design such as 'protection,' 'fertility,' 'love and romance' etc.," Donmoyer said. "This perception has tainted the genuine lore of the designs and their true implications."

To counteract the invented history of the so-called hex signs, Pennsylvania German scholars promoted the idea that the folk art was done "just for nice" and served as purely decorative with no particular meaning, glossing over, in Donmoyer's view, the celestial and religious iconography on barn stars that would often date back to the late 18th century.