By Louise Rae
Empty Bowls Perth is a favorite charity of potters, where bowls are donated to raise funds for the Perth Food Bank. Deanne Sarre has been leading this annual event since 2020 after Janet Pike handed over the reigns. Each year she calls out to the pottery community across Perth and usually collects around 650 to 1,000 bowls!
This year, Dee needed extra help getting the right number of bowls. Facing a potential shortfall heading into August, I partnered with ClayMake Studio who generously donated their space, to rally the community to help. And boy did the community deliver!
On July 19th, potters from everywhere -Ming, Emma, Andrew, Amanda, Megan, Debbie, Anna, Monique, Russell D. Cat, Matthew (i hope I got everyone!), came together at ClayMake Studio to throw as many bowls as they could in 2 hours. By the end of that time there were an astounding 86 bowls!
The next big step for these bowls were to trim them. Megan, Janet, Russell and myself came together a week later and trimmed till we couldn't trim anymore. We did make it through all the bowls! Once dried, ClayMake bisque fired them in batches.
Whew! Lots of labour had gone into the effort so far, but we were not done yet! And the deadline was looming!
Glazing began in earnest, with half the bowls going home with me to fire, and half staying at ClayMake. Shout out to Cat and Megan at ClayMake who not only threw a bunch of bowls, but glazed many of them along with me.
All that was left now was to get them to Dee in time to be washed and delivered to Christchurch Grammar School before the event on August 18th!
Dee has remarked that our throwdown effort has made THE difference this year and is much appreciated! She now has about 650 bowls for the event. "This event cannot be done alone, and it's an amazing feeling when people, complete strangers come together to contribute", says Dee. She goes on to say, "This event brings potters together, we connect and share in what we love for a greater cause."
Many thanks to all the volunteers who helped out along the way. Special thanks to Andrea and Emma at ClayMake for hosting the throwdown, donating a couple bags of Alabaster porcelain, doing the firings, providing glaze, and to all the technicians there who handled all those bowls!
And thanks to Dee and all the volunteers of Empty Bowls Perth, Nikki Polglase, Janet Isobel, Liz Berry, Jenny West, Liza Hutchinson and many others for hosting such a great event.
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