By Lindsay Tice,Staff Writer
This is the second year of the Empty Bowls Project at Trinity Episcopal Church’s Jubilee Center.

LEWISTON – Tanisha Elston worked on her bowl for weeks.

It couldn’t have any holes. The colors had to be just right. The palm-sized clay dish needed to be perfect.

Elston, 12, thought one thing as she toiled over the purple and green creation: “Would you pick the bowl, would you buy the bowl?”

If someone did, her little bowl would help raise hundreds of dollars for the Jubilee Center’s soup kitchen.

“I thought it was really fun because it was a good cause,” said Elston, a sixth-grader at Elm Street School in Mechanic Falls.

Elston and nearly 50 other Elm Street School students piled into the Trinity Episcopal Church’s Jubilee Center on Tuesday, each bearing at least one small bowl. The bowls will be sold in April as part of the center’s second annual Empty Bowls Project, a fund-raiser that asks people to purchase a handmade bowl and a soup dinner for $20.

Last year, schoolchildren and local artists gave 100 bowls. Organizers expect to double that this year.

The Elm Street students are the first to donate.

Three sixth-grade classes spent three or four art periods creating heart-shaped bowls, bowls with spots, bowls with snowmen and dragonflies etched inside. A few seventh- and eighth-graders stayed after school to create their own.

“I thought it was something nice to do,” said Kachina Harps, a seventh-grader who spent hours carefully molding a bowl and painting it black with speckled glaze.

Students dropped off their bowls Tuesday and, for the first time, got a look at the place – and the people – they’d offered to help.

“We provide pretty much a basic need: a meal,” said Kim Wettlaufer, interim executive director, as the students milled around the center’s tiny kitchen. A few adults wandered in and out of the room, catching a break from the cold outside. Other adults stayed in the dining area, drinking coffee and waiting for the day’s lunch to begin.

“It’s nice that they do things for the people who can’t afford food and stuff,” said Elston a few minutes later. “It was kind of sad, too.”

As they looked around at the facility, some of the students talked about donating clothes or giving food. Just before they handed over their bowls, Elston and her friend, 11-year-old Meghan Rowe, thought about volunteering on their own.

“It kind of made me and Meghan want to help out,” Elston said.