Throw-A-Thon: Creativity for a Cause, My Experience

This past Friday I participated in a Throw-A-Thon at Perkins Center for the Arts’ ceramic studio in Moorestown, NJ. It was such a fun experience and even though as a Perkins employee I spend a lot of time in this building, it truly felt like an escape from my everyday life. Entering into the studio and climbing down the cellar steps into this underground creative oasis set the tone for the evening. I was welcomed, instructed, and made at home with food and drink. I got to use my hands and muscles for a change (after sitting at a desk all day) and do something I’d never done before: hand-building.  And it was all for an incredible cause.

Perkins Center is hosting an Empty Bowls fundraiser at the Collingswood location (30 Irvin Avenue) to help fight hunger in our community while enabling individuals of limited financial means to experience the arts. Empty Bowls is an international program that engages artists and aspiring artists (like myself) to create and donate handmade bowls in which a meal is served for a minimum donation of $10.00. Eat the food, donated by local restaurants, and then keep your beautiful handmade bowl. The proceeds will be divided equally between the Food Bank of Southern New Jersey and the Scholarship Fund at Perkins Center for the Arts. 

Getting together with a community of creative individuals all for a great cause was a wonderful feeling. We do a lot of good work here at Perkins Center, but this was a unique experience for me and I hope those who were there with me would agree.

If you are interested in coming out for the fundraiser, or for any of the events during our Clay Fest 2011 weekend, visit www.perkinscenter.org, like us on Facebook or read on:

Empty Bowls will take place Saturday December 3^rd, noon to 3 p.m. at Perkins Center-Collingswood and is as part of a three day Clay Fest 2011, a weekend long event that will include a wide array of clay workshops and demonstrations in conjunction with an exhibition featuring the work of twenty prominent ceramic artists from the Delaware Valley. 

Clay Fest and Empty Bowls is part of the Social Artworking series presented by PNC Arts Alive.  PNC Arts Alive is a five-year, $5 million investment from The PNC Foundation that supports visual and performing arts groups with the goal of increasing arts access and engagement.  Only twenty-six arts organizations in the Philadelphia and Southern New Jersey region were selected for bold thinking around increasing arts access and engagement and Perkins Center for the Arts was one, receiving $35,000 for the Social Artworking series.