A “daily practice” can be and often is more than a habit – for Dr. Rachel Epp Buller, daily practice is part of her life, health and art.
Buller’s exhibit “Daily Commitments” opened Feb. 20 in the Regier Gallery in Luyken Fine Arts Center, and closes with an artist reception on March 12 from 6-7 p.m. She is professor of visual arts and design at Bethel.
She will embody daily practice with a new piece created each day, so multiple visits to the exhibit are encouraged, since it will be a little different every time.
Regular gallery hours are Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., and Sundays, 2-4 p.m. There is no admission charge.
The works in “Daily Commitments” were inspired by Buller’s recent sabbatical. She is professor of visual arts and design at Bethel, and spent part of the 2025 spring semester at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.
The exhibit reflects Buller’s adoption of daily practices, whether writing letters, drawing, or walking, going back years.
“I understand daily practice as a conscious discipline and a commitment to the self, whether for physical, emotional or creative health,” Buller says in her artist statement.
As “an artist who teaches,” Buller often assigns herself a daily practice during the month of September: creating something every day for 30 days to help keep the demands of the classroom from absorbing all creative energy.
She has used daily practice to navigate times of uncertainty. Starting March 15, 2020, at the beginning of the pandemic shut-down, Buller began writing one letter every day on paper that she hand-marbled in her Newton back yard.
“It grounded me during early pandemic disorientation and provided a tangible way to maintain regular human connection amidst isolation,” Buller says in the statement.
“I began without knowing how long the project – or the pandemic – would last. … [It] made clear to me that daily practices are also projects of endurance, requiring physical stamina and emotional perseverance.”
Several series make up “Daily Commitments,” representing and responding to a range of daily commitments.
“September Scores: Invitation to Listen” (digital prints and two-channel audio), for example, comes from Buller’s beginning-of-the-school-year practice.
“Listening with Trees” (graphite laser drawings) originated in Buller’s Fulbright-funded residency at the University of Alberta in 2021-22, when she walked every day for 120 days, during some of the coldest and darkest days of winter.
Other series include photographs and both mixed-media and scratchboard drawings.
The series “Arthropods” will unfold through one new drawing made each day of the exhibition.
Buller is a multidisciplinary artist whose current research explores listening as an artistic method embodied through walking, drawing, stitching, audio field recording, letter-writing and other slow modes of bodily attunement.
She is a two-time Fulbright Scholar (Germany and Canada) and a certified practitioner in Deep Listening through Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N.Y.
Buller graduated from Bethel College with degrees in art, history and German, and earned both an M.A. and a Ph.D. in art history from the University of Kansas. She also has an MFA in creative practice from the Transart Institute at the University of Plymouth, UK.
She has received numerous grants and fellowships; published widely (she has edited three books of essays, with another forthcoming, has a book in the works and has written book chapters, exhibit catalogues, articles and reviews); and presented in Germany, the UK, Canada, New York, Washington, D.C., and locally, among many others.
Venues for her solo exhibits in the region over the past five years have included the Salina Art Center (2020), the Mulvane Art Museum at Washburn University, Topeka (2023), the Envision Arts Gallery at the Wichita Art Museum (2025), and an outdoor sound installation at Great Plains Nature Center in Wichita (Dec. 2024-Feb. 2025).
Bethel is a four-year liberal arts college founded in 1887 and is the oldest Mennonite college in North America. Bethel is ranked #25 in U.S. News & World Report’s Best Regional College Midwest for 2026. Bethel was the only Kansas college or university to be named a Truth, Community Healing and Transformation (TCHT) Campus Center, in 2021. For more information, see www.bethelks.edu
