Former faculty member Merrill Krabill is the featured artist in the Bethel gallery for November, and part of the biennial Worship and the Arts Symposium.
Krabill’s exhibit of multi-media ceramic sculpture, “Between Earth and Sky,” opens Nov. 2 with an artist reception from 3-4 p.m. at the gallery in Luyken Fine Arts Center on the Bethel campus.
Krabill will give a talk in the gallery as part of the symposium, Nov. 3 at 9 a.m. in the gallery.
Regular gallery hours are Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-4 p.m., and Sunday, 2-4 p.m. There is no admission charge.
Krabill was a member of the Bethel art faculty from 1989-2001, before moving to Goshen (Ind.) College, from which he retired in 2024.
“Almost all the work in the nearly 40 years since I [finished] grad school has dealt with unseen or unexpected connections,” Krabill says in his artist statement.
“The metaphor that seems most alive in my thinking for the last 30 years has been the transition from each life through death and into what is next. Many pieces have had some kind of passageway in them.
“The metaphor uses imagery connected to life and death, but I think these apply to the transitions that run through all of life. Our whole experience is filled with losses, the in-between spaces, and beginnings.
“For me, a beauty that is unblemished doesn’t have much depth; being broken and healed, and carrying the marks of both, is what calls most.”
Krabill’s first significant artistic influence came when he was a student of Bethel graduate Marvin Bartel at Goshen College.
“Bartel’s strong promotion of creativity and creative thinking was a foundation for everything that came later,” Krabill says.
Another important aesthetic influence has been ceramic artist Paul Soldner, with whom Krabill studied at Claremont Graduate University in California.
“Soldner’s approach, pace and general philosophy about art were formative,” Krabill says, as was the impact of Japan’s aesthetic on Soldner.
In summer 2005, Krabill was an artist-in-residence at Togei no mori, the Shigaraki (Japan) Ceramic Cultural Park. He says the opportunity to work, travel and visit with artists in Japan had a lasting effect on his work.
“Another important more recent cultural influence has been ideas associated with rasquachismo, from the writing of scholar Tomás Ybarra-Frausto,” Krabill says. “These perspectives from a Latine culture feel both unfamiliar and quite familiar at the same time.”
“Between Earth and Sky” is open through Nov. 21. Half the proceeds from all gallery sales will go to benefit Bethel’s art department.
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
