Fighting hunger with art and bowls

The Vashon Social Services Network (VSSN), with support from island artists, community members and an off-island visitor or two, will host an Empty Bowls fundraiser on Friday to support the Community Meals Program

November 5, 2013 2:50 pm
Potter Liz Lewis with a table of finished bowls for the fundraiser.
Potter Liz Lewis with a table of finished bowls for the fundraiser.

By SARAH LOW
Staff Writer

The Vashon Social Services Network (VSSN), with support from island artists, community members and an off-island visitor or two, will host an Empty Bowls fundraiser on Friday to support the Community Meals Program.

Attendees can enjoy a meal of soup and bread, listen to live music, and take home a unique, handmade bowl at the end of the night. Proceeds from the event will ensure the continued management of the meals program, which provides dinners for those in need on Vashon seven days a week.

Sue Gardner of Vashon HouseHold explained that the meal program, which started two years ago, has grown significantly and now has 700 volunteers as well as a paid program manager.

“It’s a massive undertaking,” she said. “We had to hire a meal coordinator to manage it all — daily schedules for all of those volunteers, church spaces, setup. We need to continue to support this position.”

Empty Bowls is an international project to fight hunger that began in the early 1990s, when Michigan art teacher John Hartom came up with the idea to give artists and art students a way to make a personal difference in their community. At Empty Bowls fundraisers, meals of soup and bread are offered for donations and attendees get to take home a handmade bowl.

The project is managed by a non-profit organization; however each community’s events are self-developed and independent and have raised millions of dollars for food-related charities all over the world.

For the Vashon event, longtime island potter Liz Lewis came on board and has been working with kids, other artists and even a couple from off-island who wandered in to one of her workshops unexpectedly, to make the bowls.

Some of the other Vashon artists involved include Brian Fisher, Pam Ingalls, Morgan Brig, Chris Beck, Lynanne Raven, Joy Goldstein, Jane Neubauer, Carolyn Buehl and Jim Gardener.

“It was particularly fun to see artists who were less familiar with clay plunge in and try new processes,” Lewis said. “There was a spirit of collaboration and most of the bowls were worked on by more than one person.”

Finished bowls can be previewed at the Heron’s Nest this week.

Music for the evening will be provided by the Stardust Jazz trio, fronted by Community Meals Program manager Harmon Arroyo.