Since last spring, State High culinary seniors Leo Wirth and Roxanne Moritz have been planning January’s Empty Bowls event, their culinary capstone project, featuring student-made soups and more.

“I was like, ‘I want to do something that no one else has ever done.’ So, how about we just do Empty Bowls?” Wirth said. 

Empty Bowls is a nationwide grassroots program in which artists create bowls and provide soups, with proceeds being donated to local charities. At the State High event, proceeds benefited the local State College Food Bank. 

The Empty Bowls initiative is not completely new to State High, with past events held over ten years ago by Pottery Club. Drawing from these past events, culinary teamed up with Pottery Club to create 119 wheel-thrown and hand-made bowls for the event. 

The Culinary Program is not new to working with the food bank, with Wirth and Moritz taking inspiration from a previous student’s successful collaboration and hoping to make a similar impact in the community. 

“We did an event with the food bank last year…And it was a good experience. The staff at the food bank are fantastic. They just moved into a new building and we want to continue supporting that,” Culinary Program teacher Zach Lorber said. 

Pottery Club was excited when the culinary students approached them about joining the event. 

“Culinary came to us [Pottery Club] with the project and we know that we would love to help fight food insecurity and support local families facing food insecurity with the help of the State College Food Bank,” Pottery Club secretary Margo Wyckoff said. “It’s also something [an event] that we did in the past, so we figured it was a great opportunity to bring the initiative back.”

The planning was extensive for both sides, with preparations beginning many months in advance. Throughout the fall, Wirth and Moritz planned the event’s menu, advertising, and layout. 

Ultimately, the night focused on hearty, nostalgic soups, pairing nicely with the earthy-colored hand-made bowls. 

“We knew from the get-go we wanted soups. He [Wirth] immediately went through and got a bunch of just soup ideas in general and I kind of helped him whittle down to more heartier soups because I knew it was going to be winter,” Moritz said. 

The soups on the menu included classics like minestrone soup and tomato soup with grilled cheese bites, as well as the culinary favorite lasagna soup. 

“I just picked favorite childhood soups and put them into the menu and some of Chef [Lorber’s] favorites, like the lasagna one,” Wirth said. 

For Pottery Club, the brunt of their work began in September, with the club making 119 bowls over the four-month period. The club has limited kiln space and wheels, so the process was intense, even with help from local volunteers. 

“We also received help from the Potters Guild and the State College Area School District Art Department who came in on an in-service day to help us throw some bowls and same with the Potters Guild. It was nice to kind of get to talk about pottery with people who are highly educated and involved in it and [the experience] was great,” Wyckoff said. 

Pottery Club was proud of their success and already has their eyes set on future events.

“We are already in talks for next year, and I think that they’re gonna set their goals higher, so now we’ll have even more bowls to make but I think everybody [in the club] was really happy with how it went and wants to do it again next year,” Pottery Club advisor Ashley Corvin said.

Lorber was also proud of the event’s success and reflected on the Culinary Program’s impact. 

“They do a fantastic job, you know, my students are great. The ones who work want to be there, so it’s fun to see a student do a dinner for the first time and like halfway through say, ‘This is awesome. I want to do all of these [events],’” Lorber said. 

Both clubs enjoyed bringing community members together and feeling their support for State High’s programs and the larger community. 

“The food was delicious–all the props to Culinary because everything turned out so good and I think the atmosphere was really fun. I just kept saying I can’t believe there’s so many people here, even though I knew the number of people that were coming,” Corvin said. “It was nice to know that like people wanted to support the food bank, but also like would want to come and buy our bowls.”

Ultimately, the Empty Bowls mission of caring for and feeding people in their communities served as a guide for the night, leaving those involved feeling full–and fulfilled, sometimes unexpectedly. 

“We ended up having a bit of soup left and a bit of the salads and rolls,” Moritz said. ”We ended up giving that to the food bank and we ended up giving some of the food itself there.”

Gallery • 10 Photos

Grace Levy

State College community members chat while enjoying soup prepared by culinary students in bowls created by Pottery Club at the Empty Bowls event on Jan. 10. “The food was delicious–all the props to Culinary because everything turned out so good and I think the atmosphere was really fun. I just kept saying I can't believe there's so many people here, even though I knew the number of people that were coming,” Pottery Club advisor and attendee Ashley Corvin said.