About 15 Napa County potters and several student artists have spent recent weeks shaping roughly 200 ceramic bowls by hand, each one destined to be filled with soup, stew or another bowl-centric dish and carried home by a $75 ticket holder on Sunday, September 13. The event, Empty Bowls, runs from 1 to 3 p.m. at The Westin Verasa hotel at 1314 McKinstry St. in downtown Napa, with Napa chef Ken Frank of La Toque preparing the dinner alongside guest chefs.
The fundraiser, first reported by the Napa Valley Register, benefits Abode, the Bay Area nonprofit that manages the 102-bed South Napa Shelter on Hartle Court and operates free food pantries at permanent supportive housing sites across the county. Abode served almost 1,100 people in Napa County last year, according to the newspaper’s reporting, and the shelter serves hot lunch six days a week using locally grown produce that chefs shop for at the Napa farmers market. Napa County lists South Napa Shelter at 100 Hartle Court in Napa and describes it as serving individuals 18 years and older.
The event carries the theme “no bowl should go empty,” and its concept traces back to Michigan in the early 1990s, when art educators Lisa Blackburn and John Hartom created Empty Bowls to fight hunger in their community. That grassroots idea, born when the pair organized a soup lunch where guests kept student-crafted ceramic bowls, grew into the nonprofit Imagine/RENDER Group in 1991 and has since become an international model for hunger-relief fundraising, according to Wittenberg University.
A Local Effort Two Decades in the Making
Napa’s version is spearheaded by Sam Tubiolo, who has been involved with Empty Bowls events around California for more than 20 years and organized last year’s Napa gathering. Wendi Moore, community engagement coordinator at Abode Services Napa, assists Tubiolo with the event. Abode participants experience food insecurity, and organizers frame the sale of hand-thrown bowls as a direct way for the community to respond…