Nashville’s Clay Lady: Danielle McDaniel

Forty-two years ago, Danielle McDaniel walked out of a Parks and Recreation Department pottery class and embarked on a journey that would touch the lives of countless Nashville school children and residents. With very little formal training, McDaniel combined her can-do attitude with an innate understanding of the human need to create, to develop what is today’s “The Clay Lady’s Campus” at Mid-South Ceramic Supply Company. With the imminent opening of The Clay Lady’s Education Center this January, a build-out of the original structure that housed Mid-South Ceramics, the campus will expand to over 53,000 square feet of studio, education, and gallery space, to accommodate the growth in local interest in ceramics, an upsurge that can be attributed in part to McDaniel’s work.

McDaniel left college and came home to work in her family business in 1982. “I went to a clay class at Metro Parks,” she says, “and loved it. I bought clay from Mid-South Ceramics, when it was owned by Tom Turnbull, the creator of the Opulence Glaze line. Six months later, I was working there, and a year later I was teaching kids back at Metro Parks.” She knew right away that teaching was her calling. Because students could not start anything new at the last class, she asked them to bring in food for a party in which they would eat on plates that they had made. Her popular classes segued into birthday parties. At one party, the mother of one of the children was an elementary school teacher who asked McDaniel to come into her classroom.

McDaniel faced a problem. The usual two-fire process did not work well with the classroom visit model. “I needed a way to let the students work once and have me take the pots away for firing and return them,” she explains. She developed what she called “clay paints,” a prepared slip that retains the unfired color after firing. The clay paint could be used to decorate wet pots in preparation for a single firing. The popularity of these classroom visits exploded, and soon she was teaching 500-800 students a week within a two-hour travel radius of Nashville. At one point, she was walking in the hallway of a school when a student said, “Hey! There’s the Clay Lady!” The name stuck. Art teachers at the schools were intrigued by her method and asked her to offer in-service days of instruction. “I taught them what ingredients they would need and how to mix it all together,” she recalls, “but they wanted me to put it in a jar and sell it to them, so we began to market it.”

Around this time, Mid-South Ceramics had changed hands from Tom Turnbull to Esmalglas. In 2007, McDaniel joined with her friend (and current employee of Mid-South Ceramics), Tami Archer to purchase the business from Esmalglas. With ownership of the business, McDaniel had to curtail her Clay Lady school visits, which was difficult for both her and the schools she served. Unwilling to give up the program, several teachers said they would bring the students to Mid-South Ceramics as a field trip. As more and more students came, McDaniel and Archer worked to build up the educational arm of the business, not only for elementary students but for adult potters as well. “When we purchased,” McDaniel says, “there were 25 pottery students. Within three years, we expanded to 125 and needed to expand our space.”

In 2010, McDaniel and Archer undertook a five-week marathon to renovate another building that was on the property. “It was filthy,” McDaniel recalls. “We cleaned it and built twenty studio spaces for the adult students who were coming to our classes.” By 2013, so many schools were sending students on field trips that the pair purchased another adjacent building and created studio space for the children and an additional twenty artist studios. This space was named “Studio B.”

When the Covid-19 pandemic arrived in 2020, The Clay Lady’s Campus was hosting 350 students a week. When the business reopened, that number swelled to over 500. “Everyone wanted to make pots during Covid,” says McDaniel. As more and more students flocked to the programs, it was not unusual for a new student to say, “I remember when you came to our school!” McDaniel’s work as the Clay Lady had a lasting impact that sparked a creative desire in many of her students. Her enthusiasm and openness led to a teaching style that puts the student first. She says, “I have a growth mindset. When someone asks, ‘Could I?’ or ‘Do you have?’ I always want to say yes!” She mixes students of all levels in her class, calling on Montessori techniques of cooperation.

With the student body continuing to grow, with the marketing of McDaniel’s Clay Paints and Turnbull’s Opulence glazes, and the general success of the business, McDaniel and Archer knew they needed more space. The property was fully built out. McDaniel says, “We looked up and realized we could build on top of the main building.” This new building project is a large one and is nearing completion. Integral to the project is McDaniel’s son Joseph, who came to work with his mother after earning his B.F.A. in Ceramics at The Appalachian Center for Craft at Tennessee Tech. “Joseph brings the academic side to our education program, along with his abilities in systems, protocols, and spread sheets!” says his mother. The new upstairs space that hosts The Clay Lady’s Education Center is called The Second Story, with the ambiguity suggesting Joseph’s tenure as it develops. The project reconfigures all the spaces, adds room for up to 1,000 students, expands class offerings from 11 to 33, increases teaching studios from 2 to 5, and adds 24 new kilns for a total of 51. The production space for the glazes has doubled in size; the gallery and store will now accommodate solo shows; the membership studio space for artists, named “The Shed,” has tripled in size. With all these changes, everything will now be called “The Clay Lady Campus,” which will include The Clay Lady Education Center, The Shed, and The Second Story.

McDaniel attributes the success of the operation to its artist leaders and staff. “Everyone who works here is an artist,” she says. “We understand what a creative community is and give it priority. Education and supplies are secondary to the community. The people who come here are looking for the “third place,” the place that isn’t about work or responsibilities, the place where they can nurture themselves.” McDaniel’s love of teaching, with its strong beginning and persistent development, is the soul of this organization, a soul that continues to inspire and grow. Like her early solution to the problem of a two-fire process, she continues to answer yes to what is needed, disinterested in accolades. When Standard Clay’s Graham Turnbull recently informed her that the company’s 100 clay body, the clay McDaniel used for her school children, would be officially named Clay Lady’s Clay, she paused and admitted it brought a well-deserved smile to her face. As the second story unfolds, future students will always be able to say, “Hey! That’s the Clay Lady!”