Brooke Cassady sees the potential for creation in a block of clay.
The ceramics graduate student developed the concept of “communiPLAYtion: Getting Our Hands Dirty Together,” an event that allows students to dive head first into the waters of their own creativity in Foster Gallery.
The event began April 3 and ends Friday.
CommuniPLAYtion is based on the idea that art can bring people of all walks of life together and enable better self-understanding. Participants are encouraged to jump into pottery any time the gallery is open.
Cassady said she has learned through her educational journey that art and community go hand in hand.
Cassady is making a statement with communiPLAYtion, which is also her MFA thesis show.
“It’s different than other MFA shows because it’s not about work that I’ve made but the events that I facilitate,” she said. “It’s observing how other people get engaged in the clay and the relationships and conversations that develop out of working together.”
Clay breaks built-in social barriers, Cassady said.
“If your hands are working with this material, then you’re able to relax a little bit and talk more freely than you normally would,” she said. “It’s a way to help people connect and build relationships with each other.”
Cassady said she’s excited to see what develops from clay experiences.
“I hope it’s a positive experience,” she said. “I think about it like a catalyst for something else to happen, so this experience of trying something new might encourage you to try something new in another part of your life.”
The inspiration for communiPLAYtion spurred from Cassady’s work as a potter before graduate school and her realization that instead of making objects, she wants to foster life-changing moments for other people.
“I kept thinking about how clay responds to touch and the way it evokes how people make an impression,” she said. “I enjoyed making pots and forms, but the thing I was trying to capture in clay were these experiences.”
Cassady is single-handedly serving as a catalyst for local and national communication with multiple projects that tie with communiPLAYtion, including Clay On Wheels.
“It started with me taking my bike with a little portable studio, and I would just go and set up in public places just to find a way to engage people,” she said.
The artist also avidly promotes her seed pod project, another aspect of communiPLAYtion.
“I wanted to make a couple hundred [ceramic seed pods] to distribute all around LSU and Baton Rouge and different parts of Louisiana,” she said. “They have my website on them — www.clayonwheels.us — and the point is to surprise people with a gift, so they can go to the website and see pictures of where their gift has been.”
Beyond attaining the history of their pods, people can also take a picture, post a story and pass their gift along to someone else, further enforcing the idea of communication through art.
Cassady said the energy she feels from facilitating clay experiences fuels her work.
“Whether you’re an artist, engineer, graphic designer, writer or whatever you do, I think everybody has creative instincts,” she said. “It’s exciting to show people that they have that within themselves.”
Olga Gudkov, comparative literature doctoral student, said she stumbled upon the event by accident.
“I think it’s really cool,” she said. “It’s really interesting and artsy. It’s fun.”
Gudkov said she was happy to try something new.
“I’ve never played with clay before, and it’s a wonderful way to spend the afternoon,” she said.
Cassady said she never dreamed her work would eventually become what it is today.
“I never thought that this is what I’d be doing in the end [of graduate school],” she said. “I really thought I was just going to make better pots, so it’s been a surprising change. But the experience of connecting people through art has been amazing.”
 
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Contact Cathryn Core at [email protected]