FACes & PlaceS
The arts 2004

Elaine Daniels
by Marilyn Bullock

Elaine Daniels is a woman of many talents. She is a phenomenal gardener, a talented weaver and seamstress, and an award winning ceramist. Elaine has had her own ceramics studio and has been creating and teaching ceramics for over 30 years.

Elaine was born in Durham, NC. Her father was originally from Cleveland, her mother from North Carolina. Her father owned and managed multiple five and dime stores throughout the South. He enlisted in the Navy late during WWII and moved the family to San Francisco for three years while he completed his tour of duty. Upon his return from the Navy, he moved the family back to Charlotte, NC. Elaine attended parochial school for two years, public school until she was a high school sophomore, and then attended Dana Hall School in preparation for going to Wellesley. “One year at a all girl’s school was enough” and she spent her remaining year in Florida, where her family had moved that year.

Elaine attended college with a major in psychology and a minor in art. During a family visit in Florida, Elaine, then 18, started dating Eliot Daniels, a friend of a friend. She never dated anyone else.

Elaine and Eliot dated for three years before getting married in 1956. They lived in Hawaii for the first two years of their marriage. They did everything together - they traveled, gardened, and played bridge and tennis. In 1961 and 1963 they adopted two children – a daughter and a son respectively. In the 60s they moved to Florida where Elaine started taking Raku pottery classes. She loved making pottery and eventually hired a group of Seminole Indians to build her a “chickee,” a hut-like structure, where she set up her own pottery studio. Elaine has been a sculptor and ceramist ever since. When she and Eliot moved to Washington Crossing, PA in 1982, she set up a studio there too.

While their children were growing up, Elaine spent a number of years running her own interior design business and dog breeding business – schnauzers and Belgian sheep herders. At one point, she had nine Bouvier des Flandres ( very large fluffy dogs) puppies that had the run of the house and “chewed all of the woodwork 2 feet down.”

Sadly, in 1993 Eliot died unexpectedly from a reaction to a drug given to him in the hospital. What separates Elaine from most people is her wonderful positive attitude. “Why spend your time unhappy.” she states, not as a question, but as a matter of fact. She remembers her husband as a very happy person. “He woke up happy. He always had a smile on his face.” She had 37 wonderful years with Eliot and considers herself lucky to have found her soul-mate.

Elaine made the decision to move out of Washington Crossing and begin anew. She has lived in New Hope since 1994 and, at the suggestion of a good friend, says “yes” to just about everything her friends suggest to her – such as traveling to the Galapagos, Viet Nam, Camboida, and Bangkok, taking a camel ride in Jordan, heli-hiking in Canada, and touring Italy and Japan.

Elaine spends much of her time in her pottery studio, her two doges, Lily, a black 2 year old Doberman, and Camille, a nine-year-old Jack Russell terrier, not-so-obeniently at her side. Elaine hand builds all of her creations, often creating a large sculpture that starts from a small pinch pot.

Her artwork is heavily influenced by nature and things in the environment. Elaine does not like to be “routinized” so every project is a new experience. Elaine likes working with porcelain, a type of clay that allows one to make very thin and delicate designs. She likes how easy it is to mold and how fluid and organic it is. Elaine also enjoys botanical drawing and is experimenting with combining the two art forms.

We might all be better off following Elaine’s philosophy of life, which is pretty much her philosophy with clay – instead of trying to control it, allow it to find you and flow with it!