Bid on a bowl filled with heart

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 01/11/2017 (3181 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A growing number of fictitious readers are approaching me in the supermarket and asking: “Gee, Doug, you seem to do an awful lot of awesome artwork to help out local charities. Is that really hard, or what?”

The truthful answer is, yes, it is very hard. In recent years, I have discovered that producing masterpiece-quality artwork for a deserving charity is a three-step process.

Step 1: Find someone with a great deal of artistic ability, such as an artist.

Step 2: Explain to that person the nature of the art project you have in mind.

Step 3: Persuade them to do all the work for you.

That is the challenging artistic system I have followed in each of the last eight years when Winnipeg Harvest has invited me to whip up a ceramic bowl to be raffled off at their Empty Bowls Soup-er Lunch, which takes place this afternoon at Bell MTS Place.

What typically happens in this situation is that comedian Big Daddy Tazz and I descend on the home studio of our wizard-bearded pal Jordan Van Sewell, the famed Winnipeg sculptor.

Instead of just decorating pre-made ceramic bowls, with Jordan’s help we build bowls from the ground up. For the last two years, however, instead of individual bowls, we decided to create a single super soup bowl, featuring stunningly lifelike clay replicas of ourselves, typically sitting in the bowl as if it were a giant ceramic canoe and paddling with oversized soup spoons.

This year, we reverted back to making three individual bowls, owing to the fact we got started so (bad word) late that, artistically speaking, we didn’t have time to create a monster bowl featuring clay versions of ourselves.

You are going to be deeply saddened to hear this, but we did not even have time for the most important step in the bowl-making process, by which I mean going out for Chinese food before doing any meaningful work.

The way it worked this time was we got straight down to business, wherein I carefully explained my artistic concept to Jordan, who then took large globs of clay and made them look like what I was talking about.

In the end — presto! — we came up with a bowl that is a tribute to my newest dog, Juno, a scruffy, snaggle-toothed creature that my daughter says resembles “bad taxidermy.” It features a clay replica of Juno dangling precariously on the rim in the same manner she dangles from the arm of our living-room couch.

“You’ve got to be proud of that bowl,” Jordan said of my masterpiece, in the middle of which sits a ceramic mouse, which I made entirely on my own and symbolizes the fact that my family has been terrorized by a rogue rodent for the past month.

“It shows the relaxed attitude of a dog that will get another meal, and not everyone is as fortunate,” my sculptor pal explained.

Tazz chimed in: “It’s called the Juno Bowl. Juno that Winnipeg Harvest needs food all year round, not just at Christmas.”

Jordan’s hand-crafted bowl is, in fact, a ceramic sink, with a plug in the centre and a hound dog perched on the rim, clutching a tiny empty bowl. “I guess I like sinks and I like dogs,” he said when asked about the symbolism of his work. “The message is water is a resource, too. If you don’t have water, you don’t have food.”

For his part, Tazz created his masterpiece entirely on his own. It’s a yarn bowl with googly eyes, a gap-toothed grin and large nostrils, from which long pieces of yarn are allowed to dangle. “You can put your yarn in it,” Tazz patiently explained. “That’s why it’s called a yarn bowl. It’s a bunch of silliness. It’s all about spinning a yarn, telling a story.”

What you need to know is our heart-tugging bowls are among 30 that will be raffled off today at the food bank’s eighth fundraising lunch, which runs from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at ice level in Bell MTS Place. Tickets are $10 at the door or from Ticketmaster.ca. You can get 25 raffle tickets for $10.

The food bank was so deeply moved by our three bowls, it is going to hold separate draws for them. Tickets are one for $5, or three for $10. I suggest you take a lot of money to the lunch because these one-of-a-kind bowls will make fabulous Christmas gifts, especially if you are fond of dogs, mice and knitting.

Sarah Henry, Harvest’s development associate for signature events, said they are hoping a record number of generous folks turn up to feast on five delicious soups and to bid for bowls decorated by a who’s who of celebrities.

“We’d love to see more than 1,500 people,” Sarah said Tuesday morning when we dropped off our artwork at the food bank. “We want to get so many people that we don’t have any leftover soup.”

This year’s bowl-making celebrities include: rock bands Kings of Leon and Wilco; Stan Lee, creator of the Marvel Comics universe (who contributed a Wolverine mask); actor Carel Struycken, who portrayed Lurch in The Addams Family movies and the Giant in TV’s Twin Peaks; singer-songwriter Alan Doyle; country star Paul Brandt; two stars of the Power Rangers film; and Nathaniel Rateliff, leader of the soul revival band the Night Sweats, to name a few.

Henry said Harvest is banking on making bucks from the lunch because hunger is a growing problem in Winnipeg.

“We feed nearly 64,000 people every month, and 42 per cent of that are children under the age of 18,” she told me.

“It hits everyone. Right now we’re seeing an increase in people coming through the door and needing food. These are people who need help for the first time. It affects everyone. It’s hard to say why the demand is up. It’s not just any one reason.”

The point is, Winnipeg, you need to drop whatever you are doing and head down to the arena right now to slurp soup, bid on bowls and help end hunger.

Trust me, Jordan, Tazz and I put our hearts into our bowls. Ditto mice and yarn, so there won’t be a lot of room left over for soup.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca