80 for 80: Wichita artist celebrates milestone birthday by helping fight hunger

To celebrate his 80th birthday, Wichita artist Gary Lincoln is throwing bowls — 80 of them.

The bowls, once trimmed, glazed and fired, will eventually end up in the hands of people who attend the Saturday, Oct. 19, Empty Bowls Wichita event in Wichita State’s Woolsey Hall.

Part of a grassroots effort by artists worldwide to raise money for local food-related charities and fight hunger, Empty Bowls Wichita is also celebrating a milestone birthday. It’s the 10th anniversary for the community project, which was founded by local artist and educator Brenda Lichman.

At the Empty Bowls event, which includes a chili and soup cookoff, participants can pick a bowl from among the hundreds of bowls made by myriad community members — from skilled artists like Lincoln to senior groups to school kids in art classes — and sample the chilis and soups made by 18 local restaurants and individual chefs. Complimentary cornbread and bread, donated by Crust & Crumb Co. in Newton and Great Harvest Bread Co. in Wichita, will also be available.

Tickets are $35, $15 for students and free for kids 5 and younger, and can be purchased either in advance at emptybowlswichita.org or at the door. Doors open for the two-hour event at 11 a.m.

After the event, the bowls go home with their respective new owners and the proceeds are given to organizations that help fight hunger. This year’s event is raising money for HumanKind Ministries and the ICT Community Fridge Project .

Birthday bowls

For Lincoln, making 80 bowls to celebrate his 80th birthday isn’t really a major undertaking.

“I warm up with making bowls when I get to studio and don’t have an idea of what I’m going to make,” said Lincoln, a retired Wichita Southeast High School math teacher and a former beginning ceramics instructor at WSU.

“So, I’ve made a few bowls over the years,” he said, smiling, as he started on his 79th bowl on a pottery wheel in the throwing room in WSU’s Henrion Hall. Several off the bowls he’d made earlier in the afternoon were drying on a rack across from where he was seated.

Lincoln got started making pottery when a local artist he’d met on a blind date and whom he was courting gifted him a couple of pounds of red clay. Lincoln ended up marrying Diane Thomas Lincoln, a talented painter and longtime art educator.

After taking some classes at the former Wichita Center for the Arts, now known as Mark Arts, to learn how to turn clay into ceramics, he “got the bug,” Lincoln said.

“I really liked it and said, ‘I’m going to keep doing this,’” Lincoln recalled.

After retiring in 2004 from a 20-year stint teaching at Southeast High School, he started taking even more classes, this time at WSU.

When his wife died in 2014, he started teaching beginning ceramics at WSU two nights a week up until a couple of years ago.

2014 was also the same year Lichman, who had moved to Wichita from Texas, started Empty Bowls Wichita.

Lincoln offered to make 70 bowls for the event in honor of his 70th birthday that year. Making bowls to help others was something he’d been doing for a few years, like when he did a similar buy-a-bowl and chili event at Kirby’s to help a WSU student who’s wife had had a brain aneurysm.

Lichman also asked him to create the trophy bowls given to the cookoff competitors, which he continues to do.

“I like making stuff to help people,” he said, as his hands began molding the clay for his 80th bowl for this year’s event.

Building more bowls

Lichman said she expects a likely record-setting number of handmade bowls for this year’s Empty Bowls Wichita.

“We don’t really do an inventory, but I’d say we’ll likely have more than 1,500,” said Lichman, a former Wichita East High arts teacher who now is the curator of education at WSU’s Ulrich Museum of Art.

That’s in large part because build-a-bowl activities have expanded over the past decade to include more makers not only in Wichita but also elsewhere in the state.

Every fall there’s at least one build-a-bowl workshop event at WSU’s Henrion Hall that’s open to anyone regardless of skill level. The Ulrich Museum, a site for Senior Wednesdays in the community, has included bowl-making and bowl-painting part of its programming.

At WSU, the event has become the catalyst for friendly competition in the ceramics program.

Last year, graduate student and WSU Ceramics Guild officer Jessica Lada challenged ceramics professor Ted Adler to make at least 100 bowls. With that challenge met, this year Lada upped the challenge to 200 bowls.

By early October, Adler — who spent two years as an artist-in-resident with the highly respected Archie Bray Foundation in Montana — had made at least 180 bowls.

The challenge inspired other guild members to make more bowls too. Lichman said she’s expecting about 800 bowls from guild, which has grown to about 20 student members.

Art instructors at other universities, including Fort Hays State and Emporia State, are also bringing boxes of bowls, made by themselves or students in their program.

This year, Empty Bowls Wichita was able to provide bowl-making supplies to involve more groups.

“The sponsorship money is part of our curriculum outreach,” Lichman said.

While some art teachers in Wichita Public Schools have had students making bowls, Empty Bowls Wichita was able to provide supplies this year to spread the bowl-making to about 20 art classes across the school district.

It also held a workshop, providing instruction and supplies, with youth at the Boys and Girls Club.

The workshops involving kids provide something extra besides more bowls for the event, Lichman said.

They’re an example of altruism.

“It’s teaching kids at really young ages, from K-12, and empowering them with material in their hands to make a difference in their community,” she said.

More to do at Empty Bowls Wichita

This year’s event will include a couple of new things for participants.

Upscale and themed bowls will be available for sale in a bowl boutique set up on the second floor of Woolsey Hall. Price points will range from single digits to more than $100, Lichman said.

Crafted beers by Central Standard Brewing and sangria provided by Grace Hill Winery will be available for purchase.

As always, participants can cast votes for their favorite chili or soup for the People’s Choice Award.

Empty Bowls Wichita

What: a fundraising event featuring donated, handmade bowls and a chili and soup cookoff to raise money for two local food-related nonprofits

When: 11 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 19

Where: Woolsey Hall, Wichita State University

Admission: $35, $15 for students, free for kids 5 and younger

More info: emptybowlswichita.org , facebook.com/emptybowlswichita