Over the summer, Quantum Art’s new location in Cave Creek was the scene of much creativity, where new owner Raymundo Cruz made bowls, as well as provided several League potters with the exclusive Quantum glazes and kiln space. Using clay donated by Marjon Ceramics, Sonoran Art League artists creating bowls for the Empty Bowls Lunch include David Bradley, Dennis Coffman, Mike Cone, Aron Frogge, Judy Darbyshire, Pat and Mike Markham, Gordon Mischke, Robin Ray, Sydne Schinkel and Gary Wittington. Each of these handsome bowls will be available for sale at the Foothills Empty Bowls Lunch.

Throughout the year, groups were invited to gather at Carole Perry's Laughing Glass Studio in Cave Creek to make glass bowls. A dozen different groups, including the League’s Sketch Group, decorated clear round glass “blanks” with pieces of colored glass, frits (crushed glass), and threads of colored glass. Each glass creation was then melted in a kiln ~ twice. The first firing fuses all the glass shapes, frits, and threads onto the flat glass blank; the second firing slumps the fused rounds into bowl-shaped molds. Several hundred glass bowls have been made for this year’s Empty Bowls Project.

All of these bowls, along with bowls created by the students and art teachers of Paradise Valley Community College, Saguaro High School, Cactus Shadows High School, Desert Arroyo Middle School, and Sonoran Trails Middle School, will be available at the eighth annual Foothills Empty Bowls Lunch at the Carefree Town Center on Friday, October 24^th.

The Empty Bowls Lunch is the only official fundraiser for the Foothills Food Bank and Resource Center. To increase the contribution opportunity, Pam DiPietro, director of the Foothills Food Bank, is chairing a Silent Auction in conjunction with the Empty Bowls Project. Sonoran Arts League artists will donate 50-60 pieces of art for the auction. 

The Empty Bowls Project, an international effort to fight hunger, was started in the fall of 1990 by two potters in Michigan to help raise money for a Thanksgiving fund drive for a local food bank. Since then the idea has spread around the United States and all over the world. In every location, each year artists and their friends create handmade bowls and donate them to the Empty Bowls Project. Then these same volunteers serve a simple meal of soup or pasta, bread, & water. Guests choose a bowl to use that day and to keep as a reminder of all the empty bowls in the world. In exchange for the meal and the bowl, the guest gives a minimum donation. All proceeds go to a hunger-fighting organization.

The Sonoran Arts League is dedicated to the promotion of art, artists, and art education in the Desert Foothills area. 100% of the proceeds will benefit the Foothills Food Bank & Resource Center, a non-profit organization, which helps local individuals and families with emergency food, referral information, limited financial aid and other assistance. Approximately 2,000 handmade ceramic and glass bowls will be available.