Rooted in Play: Tending Joy through Gardening, Memory, and Creativity as Resistance
My work is rooted in play, which I see not just as a creative impulse but as an essential human right. These hand-built planters and stands explore how playful making and daily acts of care can become gentle forms of resistance against alienation. I press childhood toys into clay, layering bright glazes over textures that invite touch and curiosity. Nurturing these vessels becomes a daily ritual, messy and full of small joys. These planters use simple forms and impressions of toys to evoke nostalgia, but I distort and recombine objects, blurring the line between comfort and the uncanny. In our disconnected modern world, I believe play, memory, and handmade objects can resist anxiety and detachment. Each piece invites you to touch and to play, offering a space where memory and strangeness coexists. When I tend the plants these vessels hold, I honor the daily work of living in a body with its own vulnerabilities and needs, a reminder to myself and others that joy and care are ongoing practices, not destinations.
Bio
Devyn Brazell is a ceramic artist from Wilmington, Massachusetts, currently based in Portland, Maine, and graduating with a BFA from Maine College of Art & Design in 2026. Their work explores play as a serious creative philosophy and a fundamental human right, treating joy and humor as acts of resistance. Devyn’s current ceramics look at gardening as an accepted adult form of play, asking how being grounded in the physical world can help us stay present when life feels overwhelming and increasingly digital. They argue that play isn't trivial, but crucial to how we live.
