INDIAN RIVER COUNTY – A group of master potters lined the perimeter of a Vero Beach Art Museum workshop room on Sunday afternoon as they threw and trimmed their first bowls for this year’s Soup Bowl fundraiser to benefit the Vero Beach Samaritan Center.
Since 1992, Shotsi Cain-Lajoie has been leading the Mad Potter’s Association in the fundraiser she helped design herself. At the time, Cain-Lajoie was on the founding board of Vero Beach’s Samaritan Center, the first non-profit in the county dedicated to assisting the homeless.
During 14 separate workshop days over the course of August and September, more than 40 potters will gather to hand make soup bowls that will be distributed to more than 35 locations across the County on Nov. 13.
Those locations, Cain-Lajoie explained, range from restaurants, businesses, hospitals, churches, and even private homes. Each sponsoring location will invite the public in for bowls of soup at a cost of $5. Patrons will also have the option to purchase a handmade soup bowl for $15.
“It’s all about trying to get a lot of people to get together in their own community and give a little,” Cain-Lajoie said. “Over 5,000 people do this, which raises a significant amount of money because so many people participate in a small way.”
Each year, Cain-Lajoie said, every location sells out of the potters’ bowls. “They’re in such high demand, they sell out so fast.”
Richard Ramirez has been part of the Soup Bowl ever since he retired from a career as a ceramics teacher and moved to Vero Beach four years ago.
“Once you’re an artist, it’s in your blood,” Ramirez said. After hearing about the Soup Bowl, Ramirez saw the fundraiser as an opportunity to converse with other artists in the name of a good cause.
“I hope to do about 100 bowls this year,” Ramirez said. At an average of 30 minutes per bowl, Ramirez will log more than 50 hours at the wheel, and that’s only for the first phase.
After that, there is more trimming, a round of bisque firing, then a round of firing for glaze. Between phases, Ramirez said he likes to add decorative detail to ensure each of his bowls has its own unique flare.
“It’s just a really happy thing,” Cain-Lajoie said as she and volunteer Suzanne Barnes worked on “wedging” sections of clay by beating the air bubbles out before the potters got their hands on it. “For a master potter, (bowls) are the simplest form of their craft.”
On the flip side, Cain-Lajoie said throwing bowls for the fundraiser has allowed many novices to practice and develop their craft further.
From wheel to table, each bowl is crafted with care and precision by an artist who is not only concerned about the craftsmanship that goes into each soup bowl, but about the people who will end up benefiting from the sale of the bowls in the long run.
Today, the Samaritan Center exists to “offer long-term transitional housing and guidance for homeless families of Indian River County, and prepare them to live independently,” according to the organization’s mission statement.
More information about the potters and the fundraiser is posted on the Mad Potter’s Association Facebook page.
