There are still things Cally Williams wants to try.
After 50 years working with clay, she keeps a bulletin board in her Las Cruces pottery studio filled with pictures of pieces that intrigue her — things she has made, things she might make and ideas that might lead somewhere entirely different.
There are buckets of glazes she mixes herself, tools for creating texture and, occasionally, something as ordinary as a peach pit or pinecone that Williams sees differently than most people might.
And there are bowls. Williams tries to make about 50 of them each year for Empty Bowls, the annual Las Cruces fundraiser benefiting El Caldito Soup Kitchen. The bowls don't have to match. That's part of the appeal.
“I experiment with different glazes and different shapes,” she said. “And it's fun because I don't have to make two alike.”
There is a certain symmetry in that. Williams has spent much of her life making pottery, and the event she brought to Las Cruces decades ago began with an idea almost perfectly suited to her. Make a bowl, fill it with soup, and use both to help somebody else.
She first heard about Empty Bowls while attending a children's art class taught by a man from Michigan. He told the class about a project he and his wife had started at a high school, with students making bowls and soup and using them to raise money. Williams remembers her reaction.
“I like soup,” she said. “I like bowls, I like the whole idea.”
She brought the concept back to Las Cruces.
“I think I knew about the generosity of the potters,” Williams said. “And so I brought it back and everybody said, ‘Yeah, we can do this.’”
By then, clay had been part of Williams' life for years, although there was little in her childhood to suggest it would become that way. She majored in art history at the University of Wisconsin, where her husband, Frank, earned his doctorate. They married, spent a summer in Europe and moved to Las Cruces in 1965 when Frank took a job teaching mathematics at New Mexico State University.
Williams had barely heard of New Mexico. At first, she remembers looking for water. Eventually, it became home.
“I wouldn't want to live anywhere else,” she said.
A few years after arriving, Williams enrolled in a continuing education pottery class. Then she walked into the studio and smelled the clay, an aroma that took her back to a junior-high clay class and a triangular ashtray she had made there, something her parents actually used. Something clicked and the fun began.
Fun became more classes and then a wheel of her own. A neighbor had a kiln, so Williams carried her pieces next door to be fired until she eventually bought one herself. She began applying to craft fairs, and getting rejected. So, she kept trying.
Eventually she became brave enough, as she puts it, to put price tags on her work. She sold pottery at fairs in New Mexico and Texas, later sold her work through a shop on the Plaza in Santa Fe and began hosting studio open houses with other artists.
Through it all, she kept experimenting. That hasn't changed. Even when she fills her kiln with pieces covered in glazes she has used for years, opening it after a firing can still make her anxious.
“And because I do a lot of experimenting, maybe I have eight bowls and I've tried eight different things,” she said. “If I get two of those that come out, I'm thrilled.”
Some failures get thrown away. Others she gives away. Then she tries something else.
She mixes her own glazes, including variations of a base glaze she has used for about 45 years. Sometimes the experiments work. Sometimes glaze runs during firing and she has to hammer a piece off a kiln shelf.
There is always another pot and there is usually another potter willing to help. Williams describes the Las Cruces pottery community as one in which artists share ideas, recipes and solutions. She shares glazes she has spent years developing because someone else's finished piece will still be uniquely theirs.
“It's a very sharing, giving community,” she said.
That helps explain why Empty Bowls took hold. Over the years, potters and people with far less experience have gathered for bowl-making work days. One person might form a bowl, another trim it and someone with more experience glaze it.
Williams has seen the same thing when newcomers come to her studio. They are often surprised by what they can make.
“They just want to have the experience of doing something,” she said.
She sees it in much younger hands, too. For more than 15 years, Williams has worked with children from Jardin de los Niños, sometimes going there and sometimes bringing groups of preschoolers into her studio.
“Kids are very attracted to clay,” she said. “Put something in their hands and they want to do something with it.”
Even the pinecones the children collect when they get restless can become pottery tools. Press one into wet clay and it leaves a pattern. So does a peach pit.
“We get a little funny about textures,” Williams said.
Her connection to Empty Bowls has followed much the same pattern as her pottery: She keeps finding something else to do. She didn't just bring the idea to Las Cruces and continue making bowls. Williams also started an art auction as part of the fundraiser, initially collecting pieces from friends, artists and others and holding it at Empty Bowls.
When the pandemic disrupted the event, the auction moved online. Williams and fellow potter Suzanne Cain remain involved with it, gathering donated artwork from throughout the community. Cain handles much of the photography and preparation, while Williams continues soliciting pieces and helping to organize the effort.
The auction has grown well beyond bowls, with paintings, sculpture, pottery, glass and work by established artists mixed among the offerings. Last year's auction raised about $12,000. It is another extension of something Williams has seen repeatedly during her years in Las Cruces. Artists are willing to give away their work to help someone else.
But when Williams talks about Empty Bowls, what seems to stay with her most isn't a fundraising total. It's the scene just before the doors open.
The bowls are spread across the tables. Volunteers are in the kitchen getting soup ready. Others are preparing the dining room. Outside, people begin lining up, sometimes peering through the fence at the bowls waiting inside. After all these years, Williams still looks around at that scene and feels it.
People come through the doors, choose a bowl, eat some soup and leave carrying something another person made with his or her hands.
“People leave with a nice bowl and full stomachs,” Williams said. “So it's a happy, happy event.”
For Williams, there will be more bowls. There will be more glaze experiments, including some that don't work. There are still shapes she hasn't made, textures she hasn't tried and pictures on that bulletin board waiting to become something. She doesn't know many potters who simply stop.
“If they've retired, they've gone into glass or something else,” she said. “Most of us just keep going.”
Fifty years after the smell of clay drew her back to a junior-high memory, Cally Williams is one of them. She’s still going.
