By Miles Hilton
Ron Nasca makes an impression. The owner of Mudslingers Pottery sports a striking white beard, a bandanna wrapped around his head, and a business card that reads “we play dirty”. He’s unmistakable in every crowd he moves through – including last Friday’s opening reception of the Mudslingers Ceramics Exhibition at the Darwin R. Barker library in Fredonia.
The exhibit, which runs through October 30th, spreads throughout the library’s stacks, display cases, and walls. Pieces range from the sculptural and decorative to the sturdy and utilitarian. The twenty featured potters share a connection with Mudslingers Pottery, as well as involvement in Chautauqua County’s Empty Bowls Project, a pottery-based fundraiser for local food access programs.
The need for such fundraisers has never been so great. According to Linnea Carlson, Community Food Systems Educator at Cornell Cooperative Extension, “food insecurity is a major concern for our county; more than 24% of Chautauqua residents report as being food insecure. For many their only option is to visit a food pantry, or soup kitchen, when food at home runs out.” A 2022 study by Feeding America found that 15% of Chautauqua County’s residents were food insecure, the third highest percentage of any county in New York.
Begun in Michigan in the early 1990’s, Empty Bowls is an international fundraising blueprint with many local iterations. Local potters and ceramics studios donate bowls, which are either sold to raise funds or given away at a ticketed meal. This year, Chautauqua County will host two Empty Bowls fundraisers: November 23rd in Fredonia, at the Wheelock School Gym, and December 7th in Jamestown, at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church.
“This is our 15th year doing Empty Bowls in this area,” says Nasca, who claims that in that time the project has raised $381,000 for local food access programs. “All the money goes to feed the hungry, and that’s important. And the money has to stay in the area where it’s raised.” Rev. Luke Fodor, Rector of St. Luke’s Church in Jamestown, says that the money raised at the Jamestown fundraiser, about $30,000 in the past two years, funds one of St. Luke’s projects, a Mobile Market which traverses the county in the summer selling local produce to rural residents. While the Mobile Market importantly accepts SNAP/EBT benefits and offers produce “right at wholesale [prices] or below,” according to Fodor, it’s only free offering in 2024, a free box of local produce, is funded through Carlson’s Grow Chautauqua program at CCE. Empty Bowls funds maintenance and staff costs for the Mobile Market.
In the North County, a “designated fund for [food access organization] Feed More” receives funds raised.
Mudslingers Pottery, which Nasca started in 2001, is a community hub for regional pottery. The studio is crammed with ceramics, most of it made by Nasca. A half-dozen pottery wheels, used for teaching, are squeezed between shelves of finished items, racks of raw clay, and bookshelves supporting an impressive craft library. There is no meaningful separation between showroom and classroom, storage and workspace. Nasca focuses on “functional, simple folk pottery,” but cultivates his range as a potter and artist as part of his teaching practice. “I have to be able to do everything that [the students] want to do. So when they say, well can I make this? I say well yeah, sure you can. And then we figure out how to do it.”
He encourages this range through Empty Bowls, pitching it to his students as an annual opportunity to “try something new.” “Empty Bowls at Mudslingers is a creative process,” says Nasca, and this sound pedagogical strategy undoubtedly contributes to the success of the fundraiser as well. By ensuring that every student “does something different” with the bowls they donate, Nasca choreographs a fundraiser full of such a variety of pottery that visitors can’t help but find a few pieces they love.
Laurie Zebracki has studied on-and-off with Nasca since 2002, a tutelage so successful that for a time she ran her own pottery studio. She says that Empty Bowls “brings everyone together. It gives us a common goal as potters,” as well as a creative outlet. “We’re going to make more [pottery] than we’re ever going to use,” says Zebracki, and Empty Bowls is an opportunity to “try new things.”
For Rev. Fodor, Nasca, and the area potters, the community fostered by the Empty Bowls fundraiser is it’s most important aspect. “There’s no better way to connect with people than around a table,” says Fodor, “there’s a sense of real community and real partnership and solidarity created from” the project. For the 24% of county residents who report food insecurity, however, the project’s success is measured in full stomachs, pantries, and tables.