By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
A Fort Hays State University master's of art student has an exhibition showing now at the Moss-Thorns Gallery of Art that explores death and resurrection.
The title of Bethany Panhorst's MFA exhibit is "Of Dust" and is on display at the gallery through July 7.
"Death periodically intrigues us," Panhorst said in her artist statement, "but more so when we feel that we are standing at a safe distance. I grapple with the ugliness and mystery of death but also hope for an end of loss and sorrow. From a position of belief in death's passing, I create ceramic sculptures of the human body."
Panhorst said she drew deeply from her Christain faith in creating the works for this show.
"I wanted to seek something that would connect my art with my Christain faith," she said at the exhibit's opening. "I have always liked the human figure. Using clay fell into place and fit.
"In the Bible in Genesis, it talks about man being formed from the dust and clay. I was also thinking about the body returning to dust and dirt."
She said in the Bible, there are many passages that talk about the body being raised to resurrection or sent to hell.
Her art includes ceramic sculpture with some mixed media elements in addition to photography and a video.
Her images were produced through darkroom work with some manipulation and printed on aluminum.
"It's a very hands-on process and you have a lot of control," she said of the darkroom-processed photography. "There's also something about the quality of the film and the printing in the darkroom that you just don't get anywhere else. Black and white is so beautiful."
The colors in her ceramic work also are muted in whites, blacks and grays. She said she thought the color palette met the serious tone of the exhibit.
Panhorst tried new techniques for several pieces in the exhibit. This included the use of lithopane for pieces, including "Shining Eyes." A very thin layer of porcelain is poured using slip casting, which makes the piece translucent.
Panhorst mounted these pieces in wood in front of light plates. In the areas where there is more porcelain, there are shadows and depth, which results in a piece of artwork that looks more like a print or a drawing, she said.
The ghostly appearance of the sculptures fit her theme.
"It's really like magic," she said. "I wasn't sure it was going to work out. It took a couple of years to really learn the process."
She also used a slip-dip process. She took organic material, in the case of "Breath" she used baby's breath flowers and cotton balls, dipped them in clay and fired them.
The organic material burns away leaving the fired clay.
"It leaves this really beautiful shell of the texture and captures a lot of the impression of what was there," she said.
Panhorst was from a military family and moved often growing up. She spent most of her youth in Savannah, Ga., and moved to Hays for graduate school in 2019.
She has finished her degree and will be teaching high school art in the fall in Colorado Springs, Colo.