Empty Bowls art show, chili cookoff to benefit Kansas Food Bank

A $20 bowl of chili may seem a little expensive, but Brenda Lichman wants to put that all into perspective for you.

You’re getting an art show, a tasting party, a souvenir and, of course, a chance to do something good and vital for the Wichita community.

You pay your $20 ($10 for students), pick out a colorful bowl from about a thousand hand-made, one-of-a-kind bowls that you can use to sample up to 20 kinds of chili donated by chili aficionados and local restaurants including Tanya’s Soup Kitchen, Marriott and Sodexo.

Between 30 and 50 of the more exotic, artistic bowls – some from well-known artists and local celebrities – will be on display and sold in a silent auction as art pieces for additional funds.

All proceeds go to the Kansas Food Bank.

And you get to take your bowl home as a souvenir.

“We’ll even help you wash it,” says Lichman, ceramics artist and adjunct lecturer in the Wichita State University ceramics department.

Lichman first got the idea of pairing a ceramics show with a chili cook-off to benefit the hungry when she was at her previous position at the University of North Texas.

“I am an artist and a teacher, and I spend a lot of time alone in the studio. I wanted to find a way to use my art to help others,” says Lichman, who has been at WSU for five years.

As a result, she became involved with the North Texas Food Bank, where local artists donated items to auction to raise funds.

“I became passionate about it and wanted to inspire my students to do the same. I wanted to teach them that we all have our own strengths and that we can use our pottery talents to help people. And we didn’t need a lot of money to do it,” Lichman says.

“When I left North Texas, they told me to keep that passion alive,” she says.

In Wichita, she organized a few small ceramics shows to do just that. Then last year, she went big time, involving WSU, particularly the School of Art, Design and Creative Industries, the WSU Ceramics Guild, the Elliott School of Communication and the WSU Hunger Initiative – all to benefit the Kansas Food Bank.

“Our goal was $10,000 and we came very close: $9,500,” Lichman says. “It was so well-received we want to double the goal every year. This year it’s $20,000. I have a five-year plan to reach $150,000.”

At that point, Lichman says, she wants to shift the effort from growth to maintenance.

“We want to become a permanent part of the community for the Food Bank. We want people to look forward to us every year. We want people to look at the donated bowls and realize how many empty bowls there are to fill around the country.”

The philosophy behind the effort is to find “innovative solutions to hunger awareness through clay, community and conversation.”

“We want to get everybody involved. We’ve already involved the Ceramics Guild, WSU students and volunteers who took classes in pottery to make bowls, both formed and thrown on a potter’s wheel,” she says. “We’ve reached out to the Girl Scouts and some urban preparatory schools for after-school projects.”

Most of the bowls are very functional for eating chili, Lichman says, made with lead-free finishes and safe for microwave and dishwasher use.

The sculptural and exotic bowls – some several feet across – selected for the exhibit will be judged by Newton ceramics artist Conrad Snider and Emma Draghi, a ceramics artist from Florence, Italy, who will be artist-in-residence at WSU for two weeks. The internationally known Draghi will also contribute one of her works for the auction.

“I see this growing as more people become involved,” Lichman says. “By the third year, we may have to move off campus to find more room. That would be great.”

This story was originally published October 15, 2015 at 5:11 PM with the headline "Empty Bowls art show, chili cookoff to benefit Kansas Food Bank."