Charles had just finished preparing the pottery wheel in his Edison High School art room so he could start making a bowl when his teacher, Krista Marino, told him to clean up. Class was over.
The 10th-grader had made a salsa bowl by shaping the lumpy, bronze-colored clay into a smooth, squat dish. Now, he wanted to make a soup bowl that would be sold and eaten out of at an upcoming fundraiser addressing hunger.
"But I'll be helping the community!" Charles pleaded. That was reason enough for him to take another crack at the wheel — and be late for his next class.
Charles may have lost that battle, but he still managed to contribute to the upcoming fundraiser, Empty Bowls NE. The combination dinner and art fair is in its fourth year in northeast Minneapolis, and organizers hope to raise $10,000 for area food pantries by selling handcrafted pottery filled with restaurant-made soups.
Each of the 500 or so bowls for sale has been made by a local artist — including Marino's artists-in-training at Edison. Some of her students sculpted their own bowls on the wheels, while others pinched and prodded clay disks into rough, four-sided vessels. And at one recent class, many of them dipped already hardened dishes into bronze and black glaze, getting them ready to be kiln-fired into two-toned, functional works of art.
"It's a good thing, helping other communities," said Robert, another 10th-grader, as he dipped a gray dish into spackled buckets of glaze. "It's a good way to give back." (The school asked that we use first names only for students.)
Many of the students will volunteer at the event, April 30 at the Solar Arts Building, in the heart of Northeast's arts district. The exposure for these students to local artists and to the community at large is all part of the ceramics lesson plan.
"We're teaching community service, and examining how you can use art to help others, more than skill-building," Marino said.
