Finding a matching set was no easy task, so Franchesca Clemente settled for a color scheme: four bowls painted in different shades of blue and purple —a few uneven around the edges and others with intricate carvings all around. Her purchases will pay for 28 pantry meals for hungry families.

The Interreligious Food Consortium of Central New York will be able to provide these meals and thousands more with proceeds from the hunger awareness charity Empty Bowls, part of IFC’s ‘Eliminate Hunger’ campaign, which took place at The Warehouse on Friday.

‘I love the uniqueness of pottery. I love how every time you do it, it comes out different,’ said Clemente, a Syracuse resident.

Syracuse University has had a hand in the city’s rendition of the International Empty Bowls project since shortly after its founding in Michigan in 1990.

Back then, a local crafts shop in Syracuse, Eureka Crafts, created and donated most of the bowls and let students in the College of Visual and Performing Arts pitch in. But for the past four years, the school’s ceramics department has helped sponsor the event.

Erin Daetsch, a sophomore advertising major, was one of many who attended as an art enthusiast and said the hunger relief effort was an added bonus.

‘I think it’s a really cool idea. You’re helping the cause, but you get to see everyone’s art,’ she said.

Attendees sorted through the 1,800 bowls created by art students from the university and in the ceramics programs at Clayscapes Pottery in Syracuse. Each purchase of a bowl included six ounces of soup, provided by a variety of local restaurants.

Errol Willett, chair of the art department in the School of Art and Design, said this amount is very symbolic.

‘Six ounces of food a day is what most of the world is surviving on,’ said Willett, who has been working for months to organize the event with Peter Beasecker, a professor of ceramics in VPA.

Beasecker said the goal was to have people hungry at the event to make them understand what others go through in their daily lives. Both Willett and Beasecker said they hoped awareness of the issue would grow after people went home craving seconds. 

Six ounces was barely enough to cover the bottoms of some bowls, and Tim See, Clayscapes ceramics instructor and SU alumnus, said the bigger bowls were the more popular choices.

Zach Dunn, a third-year graduate student in ceramics, estimates that he made about 100 bowls.

‘We tried to keep them on the smaller side, but by the same token, we wanted to make something people would want to take home,’ he said.

Dunn and several graduate students began making bowls over the summer to prepare for the event.

See reminded a woman checking a bowl for an artist’s initials or a date: ‘It’s about the bowl, not who made it.’

Willett said every bowl is signed with a simple, ‘EB’ for Empty Bowls rather than an identifier.

‘We try to not have it be about the artist as much as the cause,’ he said.

Most artists manning the tables could not identify their own work at all. So many bowls were thrown in the same short stretch of time that it had to be about quantity as much as quality, See said.

Outreach to the Greater Syracuse areawas a tremendous effort this year in appealing to both artists and participants. See said the ceramics students worked together to create, glaze, trim and pack the bowls.

See said that he’s doing this not just to further his artistic pursuits, but also because he truly believes in the cause and making a difference through art.

‘I can’t give money. I’m an artist. I’m poor. One thing I can do is make bowls,’ he said.

Volunteers wearing red and yellow bowling-style shirts swarmed the lower level of The Warehouse. They realigned the bowls on the seemingly endless tables every time someone picked one up to inspect its texture. Volunteers came from Clayscapes, which donated all of the clay, and from the Bank of New York Mellon, Solvay Bank and the Syracuse Ceramics Guild, which donated $1,000, the organizers said.

‘I think it’s a very mixed group,’ he said. ‘It’s the biggest event yet in terms of bowls, people, members of community organizations and just in terms of reach. And in terms of volunteers —we have an army here!’

VPA ceramics majors were required to attend. Senior ceramics major Sofia Mejias said she would have volunteered whether it was mandatory or not because the cause was important to her.

‘For Ramadan, we fast and see how it is without the privilege of food, and I think this helps people see it in a nonreligious way,’ Mejias said.

Beasecker said what interested them was having their students get involved in the community.

Willett added, ‘Ceramics is invented with the notion of community from day one. … It has always been about the food, about the use.’

sfanelli@syr.edu

Published on October 2, 2011 at 12:00 pm