Why We Hosted an Empty Bowls Houston Event

I started making bowls because it’s where everyone starts. A centered lump of clay, opened, pulled, shaped into something that’s supposed to be simple. It never really is. Even now, it’s the form I come back to when something feels off—when I need to reset my hands, or my expectations.

A bowl is honest. It doesn’t give you much to hide behind.

So when the idea of bringing an Empty Bowls event into the studio came up—something that’s been part of the larger Empty Bowls Houston effort—it didn’t feel like a stretch. It felt… aligned. Maybe more than I expected.

The idea itself isn’t new.

Empty Bowls started in the early 1990s with John Hartom and Lisa Blackburn—two high school art teachers in Michigan who were looking for a way to raise money for a local food drive. Students made bowls. A simple meal was served. Guests kept the bowls as a reminder that not everyone gets one filled.

It was small. Direct. Easy to understand.

And it spread.

Over time, it’s grown into something much larger, including well-known events like Empty Bowls Houston, where artists across the city contribute work to support local hunger relief. But what makes the idea hold together is that it was never meant to exist in just one place. It’s a framework more than a program—something that can be picked up and reshaped by different communities, in different ways.

This was one of those smaller interpretations.

I spent some time thinking about what it meant to host something like this in a working studio.

Not a polished space. Not a classroom designed for step-by-step success. Just a place where things get made—sometimes well, sometimes not. Clay on the floor, pieces cracking on the shelf, the quiet accumulation of attempts.

There was a part of me that hesitated.

People came in with expectations. They wanted to make something good. Something worth keeping. And the reality was, that didn’t always happen—especially not on the first try. A lot of what we do in pottery is learning how to lose a piece and start again without overthinking it.

But once it was underway, that felt like the point.

The goal wasn’t for everyone to walk out with a perfect bowl.

It was to let people sit with the process long enough to understand what goes into something as simple as holding food. To feel how quickly control slips, how much attention it takes to bring it back. To recognize that even when everything seems right, things can still go wrong in drying, in firing, in ways you don’t fully control.

Not every bowl made that day made it to the table.

That’s true in the studio, and it’s true outside of it too—just in a different way.

I kept coming back to that original idea: a bowl as a reminder.

Not a symbol in the abstract, but a real object. Weight in your hands. A rim that isn’t quite even. A glaze that broke in a way no one planned. Evidence that someone took the time to make it, knowing it might not turn out.

There’s something about that which felt more direct than writing a check or clicking a donation link. Not better, just different. Slower. A little harder to ignore.

Hosting it didn’t feel like putting on an event.

It felt more like opening the studio up and letting people step into the middle of something that was already happening. Letting them try, struggle a bit, sometimes surprise themselves. Letting the imperfections stay visible.

Because the finished bowls—the ones that eventually got filled and carried home, whether here or through larger efforts like Empty Bowls Houston—were only part of the story.

The rest was in the making. In the pieces that didn’t make it. In the hands that tried anyway.

By the end, things quieted down.

The wheels stopped. Tools were set aside. The last pieces were lined up with the rest—some refined, some rough, all carrying the marks of the hands that made them.

Just a room full of objects meant to hold something—and the understanding that not all of them would.

Works Cited:

“Empty Bowls.” Empty Bowls Project, www.emptybowls.com. Accessed 18 Apr. 2026.

“Empty Bowls.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empty_Bowls. Accessed 18 Apr. 2026.

This event was independently organized and inspired by the broader Empty Bowls Houston movement and the Houston Food Bank, with proceeds supporting local hunger relief.