“I was the kid that you couldn’t get out of the sandbox,” Martha Matthews says from across the table in the ADC Ceramics Studio. The longtime co-owner of Phoenix Hill Pottery, Matthews has had studios in 7 cities since graduation. “Since having children, making pots has been more of an avocation,” she says, but it certainly hasn’t taken away her artistic drive. “For me, making my own art makes me feel like I’m still the kid in the sandbox. And a lot of times I give things away, and I do sell my work as well, but that’s not my intention. My intention is just making things for the pure pleasure of making them.”
While Matthews is usually the art-maker, she shared her talent guiding Chatham students in the Empty Bowls Ceramics Course. “I really enjoyed meeting the people that came.… It felt similar to the pottery co-op that I left at the University of Vermont where there’s a very welcoming atmosphere. I really enjoyed seeing people that didn’t know each other and didn’t have much art experience not only enjoying making a bowl, but enjoying talking to each other and getting to know one another. So that’s one of the things that I like about the pottery studio. It is an easy and enjoyable way to socialize while doing something that’s pleasurable and meaningful in and of itself like making a bowl for Empty Bowls.”
Started by the Imagine Render Group, Empty Bowls is a powerful project designed to fight hunger. Here in Pittsburgh, it is sponsored by Just Harvest and the Pittsburgh Food Bank and hosted by the Rodef Shalom Congregation. This year, the 17th annual dinner will be held on March 11th from 2-6pm. At each Empty Bowls event, visitors enjoy bread and soup, making a donation to hunger relief efforts in exchange for a handmade bowl. “It’s not just limited to ceramic artists anymore,” Matthews says. “It’s also wood, metal, any craftsperson or artist that can make a bowl or something that stands for what a bowl means: to hold something that we eat.” The bowls generate long-term awareness, but each event provides much-needed funding for nonprofits. “I especially like that all of the proceeds go to the local food banks in the communities. There’s no cost: all of the bowls are contributed, the food is contributed, so [it’s a] win-win situation.”
Empty Bowls is new to Chatham, but it’s not to Matthews: she first worked with the organization in 2002 at the University of Vermont while part of a pottery co-op there. After raising her children in Pittsburgh for more than 20 years, a move to Vermont was unexpected. “My husband was offered a job at the Center for Sustainable Agriculture and previously here in Pittsburgh, he had been working with the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture…. And at the same time my daughter was finishing up high school and looking into colleges and had decided that the University of Vermont was really attractive to her. So we went up for her to interview and check out the university, and at the same time this position came open at the center, and then I got a job…at the University of Vermont on a research project studying cocaine addiction, so we were a package deal. We all had our own reasons for going.”
Ceramicist and scientist? It’s true. “At some point maybe 10, 15 years after getting my Master’s in Art, I decided that I wanted to make my living another way,” she says, “and so I went back and got a Master’s in Psychology and have maintained a studio just for my own pleasure.” Staying in touch with her creative roots serves a valuable purpose in her day job. “For the last 10 years I’ve been an addiction counselor,” she says, “and one of the things that is lacking a lot of times in people that have addictions to a substance is other outlets that bring pleasure. And something like crafts can be pursued without having a great deal of talent or desire to be a professional artist.”
Even though her career incorporates the things she loves, the stories she hears in counseling are still difficult to take. “I think one of the things that makes people good counselors—a person’s ability to be empathetic—is also the thing that makes it difficult to leave what is shared in the office and go about my own life without being burdened,” she says. Her advice for anyone interested in entering the field? “This was always my rule of thumb: I try to be responsible about any of my own quirks and issues that I felt like needed attention.” For her, that means “being honest with yourself and knowing yourself and facing your own weaknesses or shortcomings, facing them and overcoming them, as well as making sure to develop other outlets that are enjoyable and pleasurable to give some balance.”