Page 8 - MSN_374_AprilMay

All About Montana
PAGE 8 MONTANA SENIOR NEWS • APRIL / MAY 2021

Judy Ericksen, Volunteer Extraordinaire

Ericksen had made 150 bowls each year
BY sUZANNE WArING for the event, until the year she fell on some

stairs and broke her wrist. Other potters
Judy Ericksen, 78, has clocked many in the community stepped in and finished
volunteer hours and has made a significant making the bowls. She is now among this
impact on her community. She came to group who make the bowls for the event
Great Falls, Mont., with her husband, Joel, each year.
from Minneapolis in the 1960s, and she has Twenty-one years ago, Ericksen sat in a
been working in the community since. meeting concerning the jail ministry offered
In 1966, during a clay-handling work- at the county incarceration center. Kathleen
shop, the instructor asked if anyone wanted Cane, a catholic nun, who was overseeing
to turn some clay on the potter’s wheel. the project, said she was leaving the state,
Judy did, and the first time she tried it, she and that the program providing reading
knew that working with clay was what she materials to inmates would be discontinued.
wanted to do as her creative bent. Ericksen had previously given art supplies
Since then, she has become an to the program, but as she sat there, she
award-winning potter. To benefit the felt she could do more; she could help with
community, she has often donated her book distribution.
art work and lessons for non-profits to When she and a few others started out,
auction at fundraisers. they found they had to invent the program.
Teaching at the YWCA led to helping that Because of security, they realized that the
organization with a money-raising event books had to go to the inmates in the dif-
called “Empty Bowls.” ferent cell blocks instead of the inmates
The general public addresses hunger and Judy Ericksen displays flowers in a vase that she made coming to a library. Although there is no
poverty in the community by taking part in on the potter’s wheel. Photo by Suzanne Waring. budget for this program, donations led to
a money-raising luncheon of soup served building carts to hold the books.
in hand-made pottery bowls that become
theirs to take home.

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