Empty Bowls 2017

Empty Bowls encompasses the idea of making bowls for a charity program. Throughout the semester we spent a decent amount of class time to produce bowls from ceramic clay. And no doubt, I had many challenges along the way while making the bowls. One challenge that approached me was when every time I flattened the ball of clay into a flat piece with the slab roller, I always made it too thin. I then realized that I needed to make the clay at least a tiny bit thicker than 1cm, so I can work with the clay without tearing it. Smoothing out the bowls was very frustrating to me, because I always try to smooth the surface of the bowls, but every time it dries out, there is always a hole or an uneven surface on it. This became one of the challenges I faced since it happened many times. To fix it, I decided to smooth the surface with a smoothing tool frequently so it won't have the unnecessary surfaces on the bowl. Another challenge that I experienced was thinking of 5 separate, different designs for my bowls. I overcame this challenge by searching the web for some designs that I can incorporate into my bowls. One design was by Jun Kaneko, his patterns is basically stripes that overlap each other in many ways, the colors are mainly black and white which gives emphasizes the contrasts on the piece. Here is one of the piece that I tried to incorporate. However, I didn't have enough time to completely make a bowl with this design because of the timing in our class. This is one of the 5 bowls I made for the project, also this is one of my favorite ones since I added many patterns to the sides of the bowl.

Picture By Me

           I think this project was very meaningful to me and for the country I live in, because in my country many people are living days without food to eat. They would have to walk along the streets asking for money to get food. Making bowls to help people get food really connects me with this social problem. Every time I make a bowl I feel like I can facilitate people around the country in need for food. The bowls that we made are sold for money and the money that is accumulated will be sent to a organization to help people that are ravenous and dire for food. This makes me happy to know that the bowls that my classmates and I are making, is making a difference to world hunger even though it is only a small scale.
          I think Empty Bowls 2017 was very successful so far, considering the fact that we had only 1 day to sell the bowls to give people to. By the end of the selling session we raised 300 rials for the organization. We also plane to keep selling the bowl during our lunchtime to see how much money we can raise before the end of the school year. Other than the money, I think mutually, everyone that participated on making the bowls helps the project to make it successful. My classmates and I spent our time to make bowls to raise money and everyone had a part in the project. I am pretty sure that the organization, Action Against Hunger, will be grateful to receive money from our school that worked really hard to make this fundraiser happen. In general, Empty Bowls should continue in our next school year, this helps us understand what other people in the world are going through, and we can help them to experience eating food like we all do.

References:
Armin. Action Against Hunger. Digital image. Brand New. N.p., 1 Nov. 2016. Web. 9 May 2017.

Flavio Dandy. Empty Bowls. Digital image. N.p., 9 May 2017. Web. 9 May 2017.

Jun Kaneko. Dango Glazed. Digital image. YMFA. N.p., 2007. Web. 9 May 2017.