Empty Bowls 2015

Some community members doing their best to follow
Beth's instructions on bowl creation. 

This morning, about twenty of us got a crash course in pottery. Beth Turnbull-Morrish, pottery instructor at Lambton College and Empty Bowls Sarnia organizer, invited a couple of dozen or so folks from the community in to the pottery studio at Lambton to try throwing a bowl of our own. 

All of this was in preparation for this year's Empty Bowls event. On Tuesday, February 3, 2015, for $25, you can choose your own hand-thrown pottery bowl to bring home. 

The bowl will be filled with delicious soup donated from one of fourteen local restaurants, and you'll also be served delicious homemade bread. 

You can see the experts from the local pottery guild standing by
to help us. (Thank goodness!) 

Best of all, almost all of the $25 ticket price goes directly to support local food banks.


(And don't worry--the bowls for sale were all made by folks who know what they're doing: volunteers from the local pottery guild donate their beautiful work. The bowls that the guests made this morning go in their own special 'extra donation' category, so if you see a bowl here that you like, you can bid on it!) 


While we watched her demonstration and learned the basics of bowl construction, Beth told us a bit about the history of the Empty Bowls event. This is the eighth year that Empty Bowls will run in Sarnia, but the idea has a longer history. It began as a high school project: high school students were challenged to think about how they could use their skills to support a worthwhile cause, and the Empty Bowls idea was their creation. (For more on the origins of the fundraiser, see emptybowls.net.)

Here are some of the bowls that other folks created. (You can
see Beth's model bowl at the top left.)

My bowl didn't look quite like the model. (It was all going well until a side caved in, but Beth very kindly said that I could use the flop as an opportunity for a creative effect of some sort.) 

I had a great time making it, no matter what the final product looks like, and I hope someone might bid on it. (Maybe my family members will take pity and make a donation when my bowl is the last one left on the table.)

And here's my bowl--those crinkles are meant to look decorative...

Please join us at the Lambton Event Centre at 5 or 7 pm on Tuesday, February 3. 

And if you'd like to volunteer, please email (erica.kelly@lambtoncollege.ca). We could always use more help!