Empty Bowls was created by Lisa Blackburn and John Hartom in 1990. There was a food drive at Lahser High School where John was an art teacher – in Bloomfield Hills, just outside of Detroit. The kids were encouraged to bring non-perishable items and $1 each to buy turkeys, but the drive wasn’t going very well. So Lisa and John thought – why not ask the students to make bowls, get the cooks in the cafeteria to make soup, and then invite folks to come and have soup and make just a monetary donation to the food shelf. The suggested donation was $5.
Half way through the event it struck them – people should take their bowls home with them. When they announced this, everyone stopped. Every time John has told me this story, his face changes when he gets to this part. As he describes it – everyone clutched their bowl to their chest, and the students realized that not only had someone picked their bowl, they were now going to take their bowl home with them. Everything about the event changed at that moment.
That evening at dinner, they named it Empty Bowls in recognition that folks had left with their bowl, now empty, as a reminder that they had helped to fill the empty bowls in their neighborhood. This is a simple and powerful concept, and event, and they worked hard in the early years getting the word out — radio and phone interviews, occasional TV appearances, articles for magazines and newspapers, presentations at countless conferences, workshops, art education associations, churches, temples — the list is long.
I learned about Empty Bowls when I met them at the Phoenix Workshop in New Hampshire in 1995, and they gave me an information packet. They created a website about Empty Bowls – Imagine Render, which only recently came down. They did not register the name or otherwise control what people did with the idea…
They simply made a gift of it – to the world.
Think of this: this good and simple idea has in the last 33 years spread to every state in the Union, every province in Canada, England, across Europe, the far East – essentially around the world. The notion is to bring people together to have a meal of soup and bread, give them a chance to talk and visit, and have them leave with their bowl. The donation they make goes to feed folks in their community. Potters’ bowls end up in more kitchens than can be imagined, and people come back year after year to do it again and again, because it feels good.
It embodies the most basic notion of community building, or more specifically, building community mindedness – let’s help to take care of each other. At Powderhorn Empty Bowls folks sit around in the gym at the park building sometimes all afternoon, drinking coffee and visiting with their neighbors, while their children play in the aisles or at one end of the gym in organized activities. Then they go home feeling good – with their bowls, now empty, as a reminder of the empty bowls in the Powderhorn neighborhood that they have helped to fill.
I find it more than coincidental that the year Lisa and John came up with the Empty Bowls idea they were also focused on creating a peace studies curriculum for K-12 in the state of Michigan for the annual art education conference. Preparing for the conference gave birth to their art and peace studies book which was ultimately disseminated to hundreds at the conference. The book took on a life of its own — with Lisa suggesting “Let’s ask Yoko Ono,” “Let’s ask Desmond Tutu.”! In appreciation for the focus of the conference, the Governor proclaimed it Peace Week in Michigan.
As you might remember, the year before this conference there was a momentous event in late 20th century history. The Berlin Wall came down in 1989. And for the first time since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, we could breathe, or breathe more easily, because somehow the very real possibility that the world might be obliterated in a US/USSR nuclear war had receded, weakened and then finally faded away.
So when I think about Empty Bowls, I think about it as building universal community mindedness to create a foundation for world peace.
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of the idea in 2015, there was an exhibit of Empty Bowls’ events from around the world at the Culinary Arts Museum (absolutely appropriate, I thought) at Johnson and Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island, as part of NCECA 2015 (the National Conference on Education in the Ceramic Arts). There were two Minnesota Empty Bowls’ events featured in that exhibit – Wayzata High School’s Empty Bowls, the oldest in Minnesota started in 1991, and Powderhorn Empty Bowls.
Below are the Empty Bowls I helped to start after Powderhorn. I still give bowls to each of the events every year. They all have their own character and feeling. I encourage you to enjoy each one of them – welcome to a quiet and beautiful way to help repair the world…
I am, after all, an old hippie, and that is why we were born – to do our best to save the world. Since the sixties I have become more modest in my aspirations. I like the Hebrew expression — “to repair the world,” because it seems more doable — like something we can do a little bit of, every day.
I doubt that there will be events in 2022, given the pandemic, but keep your eyes open for 2023 — it looks hopeful!
John and Lisa – thank you!
Kingfield Empty Bowls
10th Annual Kingfield Empty Bowls in 2020.
Eagan Open Door Empty Bowls
12th Annual event on March 24, 2021 — a drive-through event
NorthEast Empty Bowls
8th Annual Empty Bowls NorthEast — watch for 2023
Powderhorn Empty Bowls
14th Annual Powderhorn Empty Bowls:
Friday, November 5, 2021 · 11am –7pm
Ebenezer Ridges Empty Bowls
8th Annual Empty Bowls
Wednesday, March 10,2021 — a drive-through event