This annual fundraiser combines art and community action to help combat food insecurity in Arizona. Arizonans are invited to check out and purchase the hundreds of bowls on display, enjoy live music and delicious soup, which is free with the purchase of a bowl. Proceeds from the Empty Bowls fundraiser will benefit local Arizona nonprofits Tempe Community Action Agency and United Food Bank. This beloved community tradition has historically gathered over 5,000 attendees to achieve an annual fundraising goal of $30,000. Tempe Community Action Agency and United Food Bank work with Tempe Union High School students, teachers and local artists and the Edna Arts Center to create hundreds of handcrafted, decorative clay bowls for display and purchase during the event. Each bowl represents the hundreds of “empty” bowls in our community that United Food Bank and Tempe Community Action Agency aim to fill. For more information visit https://tempeemptybowls.org/
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00 The 22nd annual Empty Bowls fundraiser is this Saturday in Tempe and we are honored
00:06 to have Megan Wilson and artist Myra Leith here with us to tell us a little bit more.
00:11 Welcome to you both.
00:12 Thank you both for being here.
00:13 Thank you.
00:14 So Myra, you're doing some incredible art so we're going to let you kind of keep doing
00:17 that.
00:18 Megan, I'm going to talk with you to start out.
00:19 So tell me a little bit about Empty Bowls and what the event is.
00:21 Yeah, so it started as a community event.
00:25 Some folks in the city of Tempe really felt like they wanted to address food insecurity
00:29 in the community and so it's been going for 20 years.
00:32 It's volunteer focused and then it supports the United Food Bank and Tempe Community Action
00:37 Agency.
00:38 Really cool.
00:39 I know you said Myra has been a volunteer for 20 years which is incredible.
00:42 So Myra, thank you for all that you do.
00:44 You're welcome.
00:45 But it's an amazing event.
00:46 It's something that's so fun.
00:47 There's music.
00:48 There's soup which I love.
00:50 So tell me about what people are going to experience when they come out.
00:52 Yeah, so you come into the event.
00:54 Again, it's kind of like a festival is the idea but really focusing on food insecurity
00:59 in the community.
01:00 So each of the bowls represents someone going hungry for the evening.
01:05 And so the idea is you pick a bowl.
01:08 They're priced from $10 to $50 and they're done by schools and artists.
01:13 So you can shop for your bowl.
01:15 Once you've picked out your bowl, you can then go get it filled with soup.
01:18 And so that's supposed to represent the community filling someone's empty bowl.
01:23 It's kind of like you are eating and feeding someone at the same time.
01:28 That's really, really beautiful.
01:29 And these bowls that we have here are beautiful themselves.
01:32 So this would be such a beautiful piece of something to add to your home, your collection,
01:38 and it will always represent that beautiful time that you had out at the Empty Bowls Festival.
01:42 Very, very cool.
01:43 Well Myra, I want to get over here to you because you're such an incredible artist and
01:47 this is some of the work that's going to be out at the festival this weekend.
01:51 Yes.
01:52 And it's going to be fantastic.
01:53 So tell me a little bit about what we have here on the table.
01:56 So we have some trinket dishes that we use some forms and we use some commercial transfers,
02:01 which are the designs on the clay.
02:04 And you're going to help me make a trinket dish today.
02:06 OK.
02:07 All right.
02:08 I'm ready.
02:09 So you just take this form and you're going to press.
02:11 And I think, are you familiar with the rock and roll technique?
02:14 The rock and roll technique?
02:15 I mean, I'm a musician, so I think I can maybe figure it out.
02:18 OK.
02:19 So you're going to press down on the foam and you're going to rock forward, back, side
02:24 to side, and then you're going to roll to the right and roll to the left.
02:27 OK.
02:28 I love it.
02:29 Rock and roll.
02:30 All right, guys.
02:31 Let's see if I can do this.
02:32 Down.
02:33 Yes.
02:34 Forward.
02:35 Forward.
02:36 Side.
02:37 Side to side.
02:38 Back.
02:39 Side.
02:40 Roll to the right.
02:41 Roll to the right.
02:42 Roll to the left.
02:43 Roll to the left.
02:44 It's really good in there.
02:45 OK.
02:46 Yes.
02:47 And now you can release the form.
02:48 Pull the form out.
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04:20 We have more of the mix coming up after this.
04:22 [MUSIC PLAYING]
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