Empty Bowls, Full Hearts

Yesterday I joined 2,000 other supporters of the Tarrant Area Food Bank in their annual "Empty Bowls" fundraiser in the West Texas Room at  the Will Rogers Memorial Center in Fort Worth.

In just three weeks the Dolly Johnson Antique and Art Show will host a Benefit Booth for the TAFB in the very next room.  Got stuff? You can help by donating antiques, art, jewelry and vintage collectibles. To donate, contact us through the website at http://www.dollyjohnsonantiqueandartshow.com/

See here the 2,000 people lined up in the lobby to pick out their hand-made empty bowls, each donated by a local artist. Instead of a fancy fundraising luncheon, the empty bowls are beautiful creations, plus you get to taste samples of food from the booths of many eateries.

People selected their bowls with care, Here is mine, hand painted by a member of the Fort Worth Porcelain Art Club. Whoever you are, thank you!

Sponsored by Tom Thumb, the event involved many local businesses who gave food samples and silent auction donations.

For the silent auction, the Dolly Johnson Show donated a large folk art wooden bowl from Pennsylvania that had been completely surfaced with tile circles in the 1950s. Leave it to me to go to the mother-lode of Americana and come back with something from the 1950s. (Of course when shopping the flea markets of France, I brought home bakelite and plastic Cowboys and Indians.)

But back to "Empty Bowls"--- last year this event raised over $200,000 to help the Tarrant Area Food Bank provide food to 300 community food banks in 13 Texas counties. Day in, day out, their mission is filling empty bowls. They do it by engaging the local community as supporters and as volunteers.

The Dolly Johnson Show selected the TAFB for our 2011 Benefit Booth because of the involvement of James Thompson who volunteers there regularly to load food onto trucks. James is the husband of Dolly Johnson Show Associate Director, Cissy Thompson. Thank you, James.

By the way, James was the one-man music committee for the upcoming March 11-12 Dolly Johnson Antique and Art Show, until Cissy and daughter Claudia took it away from him to lower the decibel level. Still, most of his selection survived and you can expect some great tunes between the live sets of Clear Fork Jazz and Paul Cox/Texas Acoustic.

So contact us if you have items to donate for the Tarrant Area Food Bank Benefit Booth at the March 11 -12 Dolly Johnson Antique and Art Show, which will soon be here.

Get involved or learn more about the Tarrant Area Food Bank at http://www.tafb.org/