Clay is remarkably forgiving. That’s something Jan Archey learned a long time ago. Put your hands in the wrong place or make something that doesn't turn out quite the way you imagined, and the clay lets you know.
But that doesn't necessarily mean you've ruined anything. Sometimes you fix it. Sometimes you recycle the clay and begin again.
“There’s no mistakes, really,” Archey said. “Clay kind of shows when you do things wrong.”
It is a lesson Archey has carried well beyond the pottery studio. For 16 years, when much of her attention shifted from ceramics to a campus ministry, she found herself shaping something entirely different.
“College students became my clay,” she said.
These days, Archey is again surrounded by the real thing, and a lot of it. More than a ton of clay will eventually become roughly 1,500 handmade bowls for the 34th annual Empty Bowls fundraiser Oct. 9 at St. Paul’s United Methodist Church in Las Cruces.
That combination of creating, teaching and serving has helped define Archey’s life, and helps explain why Empty Bowls has endured in Las Cruces for more than three decades.
The international Empty Bowls movement began in Michigan, where an art teacher and his students came up with the idea of making ceramic bowls to raise money to fight hunger. Las Cruces potter Cally Williams later learned about the program at a conference and brought the idea home.
Archey remembers her response simply.
“Why not?”
The first Las Cruces Empty Bowls followed. Archey said it was New Mexico’s first and has become the state's longest continuously running Empty Bowls event. Its longevity, she said, rests on three partners: The Potters’ Guild of Las Cruces provides the pottery and much of the volunteer energy, St. Paul’s provides the longtime home, and El Caldito Soup Kitchen provides the food and receives the proceeds.
Last year's event netted more than $65,000 for El Caldito. This year, the guild hopes to raise at least $67,000 to help the soup kitchen continue serving hundreds of meals each day.
For $25, guests choose a handmade bowl and receive a lunch of soup and bread donated by area restaurants and bakeries. They take the bowl home as a reminder that others in town may have too little to fill their own. Making those bowls is itself an exercise in community.
The Potters’ Guild has more than 100 member households, and Archey estimates about two-thirds participate in Empty Bowls in some way. Some make a few bowls in their own studios. Others spend hours at community workdays. A few become what Archey calls the “power throwers,” turning out bowl after bowl on the wheel.
Bill Cook reached his 100th bowl during an August workday. Archey has made 100 herself. Other potters hand-build their contributions.
“They’re wonky and have texture and little feet on them,” Archey said. “But yet the quality of that’s just as good.”
Even a single bowl can become a communal creation. According to the guild, a bowl made during a workday passes through at least 14 pairs of hands as the clay is prepared, formed, trimmed, fired, cleaned, glazed, fired again, inspected and packed. Workdays at Las Cruces Clay and Studio, New Mexico State University’s ceramics studio and the Doña Ana Community College Workforce Center Ceramics Studio can produce close to 200 bowls apiece.
The guild once aimed for about 1,200 bowls. The target eventually grew to 1,500. Last year, Archey counted 1,732 pieces available in one form or another.
“Not that I counted,” she joked.
The fundraiser has grown beyond the bowls as well. Sponsorships, Wine & Dine, an online silent auction and specially priced pottery have added to the traditional bowl-and-soup lunch. Cash and in-kind sponsorships brought in more than $24,000 last year.
For Archey, though, pottery remains about what happens when someone gets clay into their hands. She first encountered it in high school and knew she wanted a studio of her own. She later came to NMSU, earning a master's degree in teaching and art education with an emphasis in ceramics. She worked as a production potter before spending those 16 years in campus ministry, continuing to teach pottery along the way.
Now teaching has become one of her passions. Archey believes something is lost when people try to learn pottery entirely through online videos. Technique can be demonstrated on a screen, but some things have to be experienced.
“How’s a mug supposed to feel?” she asks.
Her students range widely in age, and many return because pottery isn't something learned in one class. She teaches technique but also wants students to discover what their own hands can create.
“I truly think there’s little artists in everybody,” she said. “You just need to have the materials and the direction.”
Then something that began as mud becomes personal.
“You can make something cool,” she said. “Something you’re proud of. Your soul’s in that piece. You made it.”
That idea follows Archey outside the studio. During her years in campus ministry, she helped create a home away from home for college students, some of whom eventually felt called into ministry themselves. She described it not as a job, but as “a life.”
Looking back, Archey realized she hadn't really stopped shaping things at all.
“College students became my clay,” she said.
She was reminded that sounded as though she had made some pretty good pots during those years.
“I did,” Archey said.
Then she reconsidered.
“God did.”
