When asked about the inspiration behind her new exhibition at the Patterson Gallery, Stephanie Kantor offered a single sentence.

"I backpacked through Europe for three months," she said.

It wasn't just Europe, though. Kantor (senior-ceramics and art education) traveled to 13 countries, including Morocco in Africa and Turkey in Eurasia. Kantor's ceramics and paintings inspired by this trip are on display during her solo exhibition show at the Patterson Gallery. The show opened Sunday and can be viewed through Saturday.

As an undergraduate, Kantor has no requirement to put together a solo show, but she chose to do one anyway.

"It's definitely good to get a body of work together. It's very stressful though," she said with a laugh.

Kantor traveled abroad with a friend she met during her freshman year at Penn State.

"It was really spontaneous, and it was great to not have a plan," she said. "From where I'd been, everything was just very different, new and exciting."

Although the exhibition was inspired by Kantor's trip abroad, she was also clear about the purpose of this collection.

"I'm not trying to represent where I went, but to make sense of where I went," she said. "Now that a longer time has gone by, it's more of making it an imaginative place than trying to make it realistically."

Two paintings are included in this exhibition, Kantor said. Among other items, there is a collection of about 30 ceramic satellite dishes hung on the wall.

The idea was inspired by a trip to New York City where she saw about 50 satellite dishes clustered together.

"I thought, that'd be really cool," she said. "They're functional, but they're also decorative."

The most influential countries for this exhibition were Kantor's trips to Morocco and Turkey, she said.

"Everything there is vibrant, colorful and decorative," she said. "It's very different from our culture."

Liz Quackenbush, an associate professor of art, has known Kantor for a couple of years and said the trip shows her sense of adventure.

"Europe is something that people have been backpacking around for years and years," Quackenbush said. "Morocco and Turkey seem like more mysterious cultures. I think that backpacking around Europe is fabulous, but doing this extra trip shows where Stephanie is at."

Quackenbush also noted Kantor's gift as an artist.

"She seems to really trust her instincts, which is a hard thing for a lot of students to do, but is absolutely necessary as an artist," she said.

Ian Meares (graduate-art) is pursuing his Masters of Fine Arts in ceramics and has known Kantor for about a year and a half.

Meares said Kantor's greatest strength is associating her own life experiences with the ideas of ornamentation she drew from her trip abroad. Through it all, she maintains diligence and a sense of humor with her art, he added.

"Steph's got a bright future," he said. "I look forward to seeing what she does in the next 10 years."