Empty Bowls, soon to be filled

CAREFREE – This town donates the amphitheater. Carefree Resort & Villas donates the food. Desert Forest Realty donates the bottled water. The artists donate their beautiful work.  Lunch costs only $15 and when you’re done, you get to keep the empty bowl.

And 100 percent of the proceeds goes to the Foothills Food Bank to help feed needy families.

“Everyone donates everything,” says Carole Perry, president of the Sonoran Arts League which has been organizing the food bank’s Empty Bowls fundraising lunch for 10 years. “That’s so cool.”

Cool is right. For Empty Bowls, Marjon Ceramics provides more than 1,000 pounds of clay every year so that local artists can make thousands of bowls for the league to sell, this year filled with pasta and a roll, at the annual function that will take place Oct. 20 from 11 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. in Carefree Town Center.

Perry and Don Carroll, glass artists who run Laughing Glass Studio in Cave Creek, make about 500 glass bowls for the event. There are at least a dozen local artists who participate in the project, according to Perry, including clay artists Aron Frogge and Raymundo Cruz, both of Cave Creek. Cruz opens his Quantum Art Studio to others who may not be clay artists but want to make bowls for the benefit. “”He’s very generous,” Perry says.

The lunch, provided by Carefree Resort & Villas, weighs in at about 500 calories to reflect, according to Perry, what a homeless person might get at a shelter on any given day. The souvenir bowl, aside from being a work of art, can also serve as a reminder of those that are hungry and may not be able to fill their own empty bowls.

For more information call (480) 575‑6624, (480) 488‑1145 or visit www.sonoranartsleague.org.