Casey Whittier’s Project Cup is a public library of ceramic vessels housed at Charlotte Street Foundation in Kansas City. Twenty-five local ceramists contributed cups to the collection. Through an interdisciplinary public event series, ceramic cups were transformed into a platform for community creation and sustainment by potters, poets, and dancers. Adding to the art objects and public events are five paralleling public workshops, an ongoing podcast series, and a publicly accessible archive. Project Cup has fostered a coalescence of voices, enabling diverse communities to blend and interact, producing transformative results, and bringing to light the inherently social nature of making and using ceramic vessels.
Casey is a ceramist, teacher, and social-practice artist based in Kansas City, where she teaches at the Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI). While she works primarily in ceramics, the socially engaged nature of her work developed organically from a lifelong passion for working with others. Clay was a natural route for her to engage with her immediate community and the surrounding environment. But for a long time, she didn’t think of herself as an artist.
Casey grew up in Maine, surrounded by potters who spent most of their time working in rural studios to sell their wares at craft shows. The isolated and product-based nature of ceramics did not appeal to her. She went to college expecting to major in science or the humanities. And yet, the studio pulled her in. During an introductory class at Bennington College, she immediately fit into the team-like atmosphere of the ceramics studio. Her past experience of playing field hockey and basketball taught Casey how to work with others and was a natural parallel to the studio atmosphere. From firing kilns to group critiques, the ceramics studio was a place where her desire to engage with people met her love of creating with the natural world.
