VERO BEACH — A certain symbiosis was taking over Saturday morning at the Vero Beach Museum of Art. One artist after another was plunging hands first into bowl making, opening day of the two month long preparation for the 20th annual Soup Bowl fundraiser for the Samaritan Center.
The mutual benefits were boundless. Bowl-making made use of a museum classroom in the off-season; good for museum. Artists took classes at museum in preparation; good for artists, and good for museum faculty. Faculty members volunteer alongside students for bowl-making; good for students, who can attend the workshop at no charge.
And at the Soup Bowl event, 5000 people will have a shot at buying the bargain bowls – only $10 each. And that will benefit the homeless families.
Tracey Segal, administrator of the Samaritan Center for the past three years and a prior board member for five years before that, took a pottery class last spring to learn to throw bowls for this event.
She knows first-hand what the massive volunteer effort means to the residents of the shelter.
“The residents think it’s just the coolest thing ever that there’s people coming out to do something like this to raise money for a program that they’re taking advantage of.”
By the time the November event rolls around, more than 1,000 bowls will have been formed, glazed and fired, ready to sell at each of some 30 Soup Bowl locations.
At $10 a pop, the bowls raise a substantial portion of the funds that go toward The Samaritan Center, a shelter and support system for homeless families.
At one wheel, Ramayana Baba was “throwing off the hump,” forming his bowls at the top of a much larger lump of clay. Baba is the ceramics teacher at Indian River Charter High School. His 75 students will all be making their own bowls to sell, paying for supplies with their own money. The parents make the soup for the school’s Soup Bowl. Last year, Charter donated a check for some $400.
Joan Cortright just moved here from a neighborhood just south of Coral Gables; she was a member of the Ceramic League of Miami. She was participating because she’s joining every pottery group she can find, from the Mad Potters, to Sean Clinton’s pottery class at the museum.
Debbie Gooch, the abstract painter, was here because organizer Shotsi Lajoie roped her into it, after the two were painting together earlier the same morning.
“I’ve never potted in my life,” said Gooch.
She was standing at a high table wearing jeans and an Andy Warhol Film Studio t-shirt, smushing cubes of clay that she had sliced off on a taut wire until they were rounded and malleable, and free of any foreign bits or air bubbles.
Helping her smush was Barney Barnes and her sister, Suzanne, who just moved up from Palm Beach. Their cousin, Lorna McConnell, rounded out the family trio.
“It’s my first volunteer effort in my new community,” said Suzanne Barnes.
Barnes seemed to have a daring streak, repeating a label that had circled the room in increasing volume as the women, nearly all approaching or at retirement age, got their hands dirtier and dirtier.
“I have been reading about this, and it was on my bucket list to be a Clay Bi**h,” she said. This time, she really owned the phrase.
Gooch suggested “Wedgies” was more accurate, because “wedges” was the term for the clay hunks they were working.
“She does delegate well, which you need to do to get all this done,” said Barney.
Saturday at the Soup Bowl workshop, LaJoie did more than delegate. A ceramicist herself, she coached the novices on the physics of forming a bowl out of a bowl, pressing on wet clay while a foot pedal gauges the speed of the spinning wheel.
“Your hands need to touch,” she told Segal as her bowl began to wobble. “Ground your hands so they become this tool that doesn’t move. The clay has to conform with this thing you’ve made with your hands. If you have your hands separated, you won’t be able to center the clay.”
“It’s not centered?” Segal asked.
“No. I love you, but it’s not.” LaJoie responded.
“Shut up!” said Segal, incredulous. She had to end her session early when her husband arrived with her five-year-old.
“Come back Wednesday for the centering of the clay,” she said as she stood to leave. “It’ll be real.”
“This is the greatest way to learn about this skill,” says Lajoie.
“It’s so circular,” she says. “It’s free for the artists and they can do as many as they like. And as the bar gets raised by the professionals here, people want to get better so they take another class and they come back next year and they’re rock stars.”
The workshops continue through the end of September on weekends and Wednesday afternoons. The complete schedule is on the Mad Potters’ Facebook page, or call the museum at (772) 231-0707.