Empty bowls fill a fundraising need

The Lawrence High School art department has proven itself to be just as caring as it is creative. In the spirit of the Thanksgiving holiday, art teacher Lee Eskin teamed up with several of her talented students and along with other faculty members to hold the first Lawrence Empty Bowls fundraiser.
Many other schools and organizations hold their own Empty Bowls fundraisers, but it had not reached Lawrence until this year. The goal of each fundraiser is to sell bowls to not only raise awareness, but to help combat hunger in American communities. The empty bowls symbolize how many families in our communities don’t have a reliable source of food.
Eskin and some of her students put their skills into action and took to their pottery wheels to create handmade bowls. The bowls were then glazed, fired, and thoroughly cleaned to make sure they were ready for use. Each bowl was sold for $10, which was then filled with chicken soup, courtesy of culinary arts and baking teacher Ruth. Cohen. The bowls were sold in the art gallery prior to the first two showings of the school’s production of “Footloose.” About $900 was raised.
Students, parents, and faculty alike lined up to purchase their own piece of art and a hot bowl of soup. No two bowls were alike, as many different people had contributed to the project, many different colored glazes were used, and different shapes of bowls were created. The creativity and passion of the students really came through in their artwork.
Senior ceramics student Fernando Fajardo, who created numerous bowls for the project, beamed with pride at the success of the fundraiser. He worked hard to advertise the event as much as possible, and even spent an entire school day doing nothing but making bowls for the project. “Even though it’s nice to get your work recognized, it’s not about that. What’s most important is how many people we can help with the money we raised, and how good it feels to be able to do that,” he said.