Fifty bowls, endless possibilities

Natalie Pappas begins working on Empty Bowls months before anyone walks through the door. 

By the end of March, the Las Cruces potter aims to have 50 bowls finished — each thrown, trimmed, decorated, glazed and fired from her home studio. Cats stretch across some, while flowers and bold graphic designs cover others. 

“I get to do a lot of experiments,” Pappas said. “I don’t have to worry about if they’re going to sell or not.” 

The bowls will eventually join hundreds of others made by area potters for the Potters’ Guild of Las Cruces’ annual Empty Bowls fundraiser, which benefits El Caldito Soup Kitchen. Attendees select a handcrafted bowl and share a meal, with proceeds supporting the soup kitchen. 

Pappas usually begins in January and finishes by the end of March. Each bowl requires roughly an hour to an hour and a half of hands-on work, with drying time between stages and enough finished pieces needed to fill the kiln before firing. She works ahead, so an illness or unexpected interruption won’t keep her from reaching her goal. 

Her first year participating in Empty Bowls in Las Cruces, Pappas made 100 bowls,  a number she now admits was “a little much.” But the workload became an education as she studied what makes a functional bowl, from the thickness of its bottom to creating an interior curve that works comfortably with a spoon. 

“I went down the rabbit trail with bowls,” she said. 

Pappas first worked with clay as a teenager before spending years away from pottery. She returned to the wheel at 39 and discovered that one of the most important skills she had learned as a teenager had stayed with her. 

“I could still center,” Pappas said. 

After moving back to Las Cruces, she learned about the Potters’ Guild through people she met at the farmers market and eventually attended a meeting. Pappas had donated occasional pieces to an Empty Bowls program while living in Fort Worth, but joining the Guild brought her deeper into the effort. 

“The only way I know how to make a really good bowl is to practice,” Pappas said. 

Making dozens at a time gave her plenty of it. As the mechanics became more familiar, Pappas began paying greater attention to what she could do with the surface. This year she leaned heavily into graphic designs, while other years have focused more on texture. 

“The throwing and the trimming of them, it’s a snap now,” she said. “Now it’s all about the surface design.” 

Because the bowls are made for the fundraiser rather than her regular sales, Pappas can experiment without wondering whether a piece will appeal to a customer. Flowers and cats frequently find their way into those designs, reflecting two of her longtime interests. 

Although Pappas makes her 50 bowls at home, the work stretches across the local ceramics community. Guild members begin discussing Empty Bowls in January, provide updates at meetings and organize work dates at larger studios, where members gather to throw or glaze pieces together. 

“There’s a lot more people than me that do this,” Pappas said. “I’m not the only one. It’s just all about the community.” 

That community effort helped Empty Bowls raise a record $65,855 for El Caldito in 2025, surpassing its $45,000 fundraising goal. More than 1,300 people attended, with area potters creating more than 1,700 bowls for attendees to choose from. 

Pappas sees the impact from both sides. She enjoys watching people find something she created, but the larger reason she returns to the project is where the money goes. 

“When I go to the Empty Bowls event and I see people pick up one of my bowls and smile, that just makes my day,” Pappas said. “The bigger reason is because we’re feeding the poor.” 

For Pappas, supporting El Caldito offers a direct way to help people in the community where she grew up. Rather than deciding for herself what someone might need, she said she prefers supporting an organization equipped to provide food to those who seek it. 

“I hope they just take away happiness,” Pappas said. “Because it makes me really happy.”