Not only do Marshall students get to learn pottery, they also get to fight against food insecurity with the Empty Bowls event, an event organizer said.

Empty Bowls’ 22nd annual fundraiser to support the Facing Hunger Foodbank took place Friday, May 2 from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at Pullman Square.

“It’s a beautiful morning. I feel just the fact that there’s so many community members here already, and there’s been so many people that have already come out, and I just feel like it’s a real success so far,” event organizer Frederick Bartolovic said.

Marshall student Nicole LeGrow said she was incredibly excited about the day so far and the turnout of people that came to buy some bowls. 

“I’m really excited to see so many bowls go so quickly, and I just can’t wait to see how much we end up getting to make for the food bank,” LeGrow said.

LeGrow said she had participated last year, and the event had raised a little bit over $15,000, and she hoped to meet that again this year.

Bartolovic said the students, though they might have hated pottery at the beginning, ended up loving it by the end of the semester. He said it is so much fun to see the growth that the students have and the cause they get to help.

“I run a couple of community-based learning classes at Marshall and the pottery classes, and so my students in those classes I told them right at that beginning of the year, ‘This is what we’re doing, we’re working towards this event,’” Bartolovic said. “A lot of them come in, they’ve never thrown on the wheel before. They don’t know what they’re doing, and so they have essentially a semester to kind of get there and figure it out and throw all the bowls.”

Bartolovic said the beginning class of students are tasked with throwing 20 bowls, and the intermediate students create 40 bowls for the event. He said LeGrow had participated last year in the beginner class and then was in the intermediate class this year, and it was so interesting to see the growth of her pottery. 

“She found a bowl of hers last year, and it was so much fun to see her bowl from last year versus the bowl she made this year. Her bowls this year are so much better. They are just lighter and more elegant, and the forms are just beautiful,” Bartolovic said. “It’s so much fun for me as a professor to see that growth in the students, and also for the students, it’s a reward for them to be able to see so many people coming out interested in purchasing their bowls and helping to support the food bank.”

LeGrow said it is awesome to not only see people interested in buying bowls of hers from this year and last year, but also to see what everyone has worked on for the year. 

“It’s awesome to see what everybody has worked on so hard for this year, and it’s exciting to see people want to buy your work,” LeGrow said. 

Bartolovic said this event is not only exclusive to Huntington, West Virginia, but is also a national initiative. He said it started back in the ‘90s with a high school teacher in North Carolina, and it still goes on every year to battle against food insecurity.

“In these times, I think food insecurity is a real issue for people, and anything we can do to help is a really good thing,” Bartolovic said.

According to the Facing Hunger Foodbank, every purchase that was made during the event will go to provide 180 meals for those in need of assistance.

Soleil Woolard can be contacted at [email protected].