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Creating empty bowls for bodies and souls
(by TaRessa Stovall - October 15, 2008)
A chunk of clay.
A pair of hands.
A willing heart.
Add several generous heaps of community support, stir in genuine intention, and you have a can’t-miss recipe for fighting hunger through an innovative public art collaboration.
Montclair’s Empty Bowls Project has brought together children, adults, classrooms, colleagues and young dancers from another continent to craft some 160 beautiful bowls which will be filled with savory vegetable soup at a fundraiser for Toni’s Kitchen and the Human Needs Food Pantry on Sunday, Oct. 26.
Spearheaded by Elizabeth Smith Jacobs, best known for her sculptures and community art projects such as Tony’s Bench at Montclair High School and the Unity Wall, a series of tiles made by residents and displayed in public spaces throughout the town, the Empty Bowls Project is part of a national movement to fight hunger.
Last March, Smith Jacobs received a call from her friend, Gwen Charles, an art educator at the Montclair Art Museum who also runs the Montclair Food Co-op. "Gwen said ‘I want people to make clay bowls and we can serve soup in them and make it a fundraiser.’"
Smith Jacobs told Charles about the Empty Bowls Project, headquartered in North Carolina, which her mother has participated in. "It was exactly what we needed."
The Empty Bowls Project has grown far beyond North Carolina to every corner of the U.S. "The concept is very open-ended. It allows people to bring it into their community in the best way that works for them," Smith Jacobs explained.
ART FOR HEART’S SAKE
Smith Jacobs recruited Charles and two other artist/art educator friends, Peg Kenselaar of Caldwell and Claudia Sabino-Benowitz, and invited visitors to the Montclair Farmers Market held Saturdays in the Walnut Street Train Station parking lot to design clay bowls.
"We set up tables and people would roll out a slab, pick a bowl form and make and decorate a bowl, which they would leave," Smith Jacobs said. "We were there for pretty much the whole month of July."
Others jumped in: a community art class at Renaissance Middle School, a group of graduating seniors from Montclair High School, a group of Ethiopian girls who were in the area for a performance of their folkloric dances at the South Orange Performing Arts Center and several Montclair Art Museum staff members, who utilized the bowl-making as a staff enrichment project, along with MAM Director Patterson Sims and Montclair Mayor Jerry Fried. While the bowl-making was free, several participants made donations to help cover costs.
Once the bowls were created, they needed to be fired. Enter Doin’ Dishes, the paint-your-own ceramics studio at 50 Church St. "They were such an important part of the process, everyone there was really involved," Smith Jacobs said. Residents were invited in to the ceramics studio to glaze bowls. Some of them made financial contributions as well.
The result: 160 lovely and wholly individual bowls, made without artist signatures but stamped with the national Empty Bowls Project logo to verify authenticity, that are dishwasher safe.
"One of the most important things about this project is that these bowls were made with the intention to be able to make something and give it away," Smith Jacobs said. "At Renaissance, we talked with the students about the fact that people were going to buy the bowls, and they were going to support people that couldn’t afford food, and that it might be hard for some of the students to get into creating them.
"And one boy said, ‘I don’t think it will be hard. I think I’ll enjoy it more,’" Smith Jacobs said. "Being able to give people an opportunity to create with their hands in a community setting makes it that much more valuable for everyone."
FOOD FOR THE SOUL
The project has grown beyond its leaders’ expectations. And impacted them in some unexpected ways. "Initially, when I got involved, a homeless relative in the area was weighing heavily on my mind," Kenselaar said. "I’ve had to come to grips with how she wants to live her life. Doing this gives me a positive outlet for the sadness that I feel as a result. It really feeds that part of me just to be able to give from the heart and not expect anything in return."
Several people are asking for the project to continue, and to expand, and Smith Jacobs said that she and her colleagues are looking into grant-writing to cover some of the expenses, which run about $50 per bowl. The response is truly inspiring, she said. "It just shows you when you do things in community, how they unfold, how they touch you in different aspects of your life," Smith Jacobs said.
"That’s why we want to keep doing it."
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