Lucy Gellman Photo
Every November for 19 years, studio potter and teacher Margie Haggerty has changed up her routine just a little bit. She still spends time in the studio and at the wheel, hands wet and shiny with clay. The glazes that she cooks up and tempers for students don’t vary all that much. And several nights a week, she still prioritizes what she calls “the business end of things” for classes at Creative Arts Workshop (CAW), where she has worked a second job for almost 20 years.
But after those tasks are done for the day — glazes painted and fired on, students attended to, kilns turned back off when the evening’s classes have ended — she turns to another activity she has planned year after year, where a number of her bowls get back to their functional roots.
That’s the annual Bowl-A-Thon, where the proceeds from the sales of donated, hand-made pottery, bowls and mugs by CAW potters including Haggerty (pictured) go directly to New Haven’s Community Soup Kitchen. In return for their purchase, attendees can enjoy steamy, aromatic soups donated by New Haven businesses like Chestnut Fine Foods and Atticus.
On Sunday, Haggerty, a small army of volunteers, and a couple hundred attendees celebrated the 19th annual Bowl-A-Thon in the potter’s studio at CAW, raising around $8,000 just before the Thanksgiving holiday.
“Nineteen years ago, one of my friends told me about the Empty Bowl national event, and so I brought the event to the group here” said Haggerty, helping fellow potter and volunteer Nancy Scheinkman dole out piping hot bowls of apple-chicken, lentil vegetable, and New England clam chowder. “We started real small scale — first event we made $1,800 and now we make between 7 and 8 [thousand] — and we wanted to expand it into a pre-Thanksgiving event, so we contacted local area restaurants to donate soup and bread to make it a real communal feeling. It’s really gotten bigger and bigger. Leading up to it, there’s a lot of wok, and you go: ‘this is going to be my last year,’ and then after it happens you get high from counting the money and handing it to David [O’Sullivan, coordinator at the Community Food Bank]. It’s really special.”
“I don’t know if my favorite part is watching people pick out the pottery, or watching them after when they’re sitting and eating their soup, and pulling them out and showing them to their friends” added Scheinkman, a former CAW teacher who still helps organize the event. “I get a kick out of that.”
They weren’t the only ones to enjoy it. From early to late in the afternoon, singletons, couples, and families flowed into the room, drawn by the rising scents of chicken broth, apple cider, fresh bread, and the allure of ceramics with a charitable price. There were some young ceramics enthusiasts …
.… a furry guest who barked loudly as she and owner Lianne Audette perused bowls …
… as well as seasoned bowl veterans like O’Sullivan, who spent a long time touching and analyzing glazes before choosing a bowl.
“It’s such a great thing because we give it all away,” said CAW Director Daniel Fitzmaurice, sipping an apple-chicken soup. “There’s no intrinsic benefit and it’s so rare that any organization does that.”