PRESS PLAY: An Invitation

In contemporary everyday life, play is often treated as a luxury. It is what remains after the work is finished, the responsibilities are met, and the productive tasks of the day are complete. We speak of play as recreation, as a temporary departure from the serious business of living, as something left behind and belonging only to the “care-free days” of our youth.

What if we have it backward though?

What if play is not the opposite of seriousness, but one of the most serious ways we engage the world?

This exhibition, Press Play, invites us to reconsider a capacity many of us associate with childhood but rarely recognize as essential to adult life. Through experimentation, humor, chance, curiosity, and wonder, the artists gathered here remind us that play is not merely an activity. It is a way of paying attention. Aesthetic experience, art and engaging with art, belongs to everyone and is something we are already participating in, whether we are paying attention or not. 

Philosopher Yuriko Saito argues that aesthetic experience is not confined to museums or galleries. The aesthetic dimensions of life surround us; in the objects we choose, the spaces we inhabit, the meals we prepare, and the rhythms that structure our days. Our everyday environments shape not only what we see but how we live. For Saito, aesthetics carries ethical significance because our choices influence the quality of life for ourselves and others. Consider the rituals of a Maine summer: a weathered chair facing the water, a clothesline moving in the sea breeze, wild lupines blooming along the roadside, or the first farmers market of the season. None of these experiences belong in a museum, yet together they shape our sense of place, belonging, and quality of life. They remind us that aesthetics is not reserved for extraordinary moments but lives within the texture of everyday experience. The appearance and care of shared spaces, the attention we give to our surroundings, and even the seemingly ordinary decisions we make each day communicate values about what matters. Consider the spaces you move through each day. Why do some front porches invite conversation while others feel unwelcoming? Why do we plant gardens, arrange flowers on a table, or display artwork in our homes? These choices may seem small, but they shape how we experience our surroundings and communicate what we value. Aesthetic experience, then, is not simply about beauty or pleasure. It is a way of cultivating attentiveness, care, and meaningful engagement with the world immediately around us.

Similarly, philosopher Katia Mandoki challenges the notion that aesthetics belongs exclusively to art. Through what she calls “prosaics,” Mandoki draws attention to the countless ways people create meaning through ordinary acts: conversation, dress, ritual, affection, humor, and play. Rather than treating aesthetics as something reserved for exceptional objects, she locates it within the expressive dimensions of everyday life itself. We are constantly shaping and being shaped by aesthetic experiences through our interactions with others, our communities, and the social rituals that structure daily existence. Think about food and how where you are born shapes how you feel about regional delights; are you a mayo or butter kind of person? Did your family recipe change over the years to adapt to evolving tastes? Or has it stayed exactly the same for generations because the act of recreating your great-great-grandparents recipe is what makes you feel connected and evokes that sense of “home”? For Mandoki, aesthetic experience is fundamentally relational. It emerges through participation rather than observation, through the gestures, performances, and exchanges that connect us to one another. Everyday life is not separate from aesthetic experience; it is one of its most important sites.

Together, Saito and Mandoki challenge one of our culture’s most persistent assumptions: that aesthetics belongs primarily to works of art. Instead, they reveal that aesthetics is something we practice every day through the choices we make, the spaces we care for, the traditions we preserve, and the relationships we cultivate. If everyday life is already an aesthetic practice, then play is not an escape from that practice—it is one of its most vital expressions. Play invites us to participate more fully in the ongoing creation of meaning, allowing curiosity to guide us where habit so often takes over.

Seen through this lens, play emerges as more than amusement. It becomes a form of engagement with the world. To play is to experiment without certainty. To follow curiosity without knowing where it will lead. To remain open to surprise. Children understand this intuitively. A cardboard box becomes a castle. A stick becomes a wand. The value lies not in the object itself but in the possibilities it contains. As adults, we are often encouraged to trade possibility for efficiency. We learn to measure our actions by outcomes, productivity, and utility. Yet creativity depends upon a different logic. New ideas rarely emerge from rigid certainty; they emerge through exploration, accident, improvisation, and the willingness to make mistakes. Play creates space for precisely these conditions.

In Tom Jessen’s embrace of chance, Tori Marsh’s pursuit of experimentation, and Tara Morin’s invitation to begin, we encounter artists who approach creativity not as the execution of a predetermined plan but as an ongoing conversation with uncertainty. Their work reminds us that discovery often occurs when control loosens and curiosity takes the lead.

Jessen’s process invites accident and surprise, trusting that meaning can emerge from what cannot be planned. Marsh embraces playfulness and humor, following ideas wherever they lead and allowing experimentation to become a method of discovery. Morin’s curatorial vision frames play not as a subject to observe but as an invitation to participate—a reminder that creativity begins the moment we permit ourselves to explore.

Together, these artists suggest that play is not the opposite of knowledge but one of its sources. Through play we test possibilities, challenge assumptions, and encounter the unexpected. We become willing to ask questions before we have answers.

The title of this exhibition is not a description. It is an instruction.

When was the last time you made something simply to see what would happen?

When was the last time you followed an idea that made no practical sense?

When was the last time you laughed because something failed spectacularly?

When was the last time you gave yourself permission to wonder?

Press Play.

Begin.

See what happens.

Bibliography
Mandoki, Katya. 2007. Everyday Aesthetics: Prosaics, the Play of Culture and Social Identities. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate.
Saito, Yuriko. 2007. Everyday Aesthetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Saito, Yuriko. 2017. Aesthetics of the Familiar: Everyday Life and World-Making. Oxford: Oxford University Press.