Life & Work with Lori Neal Nolen

Today we’d like to introduce you to Lori Neal Nolen. 

Hi Lori, please kick things off for us with an introduction to yourself and your story.
“I’ve never been the activist type, but if the town decides to demolish the old filling station on the court square, I think I might just chain myself to it!” Almost thirteen years ago, those were the first words I ever said to the mayor of Huntingdon, TN, while attending a church picnic with my husband’s family. And, because I’ve always had an affection for old things and quaint little downtowns, I found myself practically accosting Mayor Dale Kelley as to his plans for the structure. Prior to our introduction, I had overheard someone talking about it being donated to the town, and “They were going to knock it down to become a parking lot. You know, because the parking is so bad on court days!” Well, a man of his position could have easily dismissed my comments and politely excused himself, but instead, he asked me what I thought should happen to it. I then proceeded to brainstorm out loud, how it should become something like a coffee shop or small restaurant and somehow tie into The Dixie for pre-show activity. “The Dixie,” as it is affectionately referred to, was the performing arts center newly opened on the other side of the court square and named after the local star from the area, actress Dixie Carter. We chatted a bit about it, and then before he moved on through the crowd, he told me if I had any more thoughts on it to let him know. 

After this, some time passed, and several life events occurred that led us back to living in my husband’s hometown and me looking to possibly build my own studio at our house. After meeting with several contractors, I just couldn’t get anyone to commit. Then, it hit me—the gas station. I could turn it into a studio with a classroom facility! Prior to getting married and returning to West TN as a ceramics and art history professor at a local university, I had been coming home each summer and teaching Mudslingers Pottery Camps for ages 4—adults in the art room at a local school. Every year, my numbers grew and the program proved to be extremely successful. Having a space like the two-bay gas station meant I could hold classes permanently, so I called and set up a meeting with the mayor. 

In preparation, I made scale drawings of the building with new windows, glass bay doors, and what it would look like set up as a classroom, gallery, and kiln room. I created presentation boards that also showed the color and material swatches we would use in the updates, and I found information on a gas station renovation grant that we could apply for. With all this in hand and a whole lot of passion, I presented to the mayor. He immediately called a foundation he was connected with and told me that grants take too long, and we would meet with the board the next day. So, I presented my ideas again and they agreed to fund it right there! 

Within a few weeks, five employees for the Town of Huntingdon were on site at the gas station renovating the building. When we started, these men had great doubts about why they were having to work on a building they thought just needed to be torn down. One day, they ripped the original downspouts off the exterior of the building, and I found them in a trash pile. I brought them back in the building, gathered everyone around, and commenced to explain how beautiful the patina on these things were from years of funneling water off the buildings. We would now use them for large planters in the gallery space. From that point on, they knew not to throw anything away without my approval. Over the course of the year, I involved them in all kinds of decisions about paint colors, helping me find the original manufacturer of clay tiles for the roof, repurposing the ceiling tin into decorative items and so much more. When it came time for the ribbon-cutting to open, these same men flanked me, dressed in their best suits and smiling proudly. I even overheard one of them giving someone a tour and he mentioned how he was responsible for picking out the paint color because its name was clay pot and that was just fitting. 

This was my first realization that having an artistic experience didn’t have to be me strictly working with my hands. I helped lead a group through a process where their mindset changed, seeing possibilities in something when I provided the vision, and us all doing it as a group together. It changed my life. It also changed my career path. People that owned other downtown buildings started coming to me and asking if I would help them figure out what to do with their building. I’d load a photo of the facade into my computer, make some enhancements in photoshop, and help them see what it could be. Since that time, 24 buildings have made cosmetic updates to their exteriors. 

While the gas station renovations were taking place, the Executive Director position at The Dixie became available. Several in the community encouraged me to apply for the job, but I didn’t know the first thing about the performing arts. However, in a town of 4,000 people, there are not a lot of artistic individuals. So, I really considered how this might be one of those moments where God placed me in Huntingdon at this specific time, to do something that I didn’t think I could do, and He would make a way. Boy, was that ever true! 

For the next 11 years, I served as the Executive Director at The Dixie Carter Performing Arts & Academic Enrichment Center, Home of the Hal Holbrook Theatre. I oversaw all theatre functions as a department head within the Town of Huntingdon, working directly for the same mayor I approached at the church picnic! I was very fortunate to work in a town of this size, where the government entity gave the arts a seat at the table, right along with our public works, finance, and public safety departments. During my time, I booked over 500 shows for the Main Events and School Time Performance Series. Each year, approximately 8,000 children came through the doors of The Dixie to experience live performances. I helped establish a partnership with the local school system to develop after-school programs in various visual and written art forms, theatre, and music. One of my initial goals was to fill the building with students during our off-show days so that kids in our area could have opportunities I didn’t have growing up in this area of West TN. Our staff really took pride in this initiative, and personally, I loved getting to support other artists and art educators, while also teaching my own pottery classes. Since opening in 2009, Mudslingers has seen some 2,400 students take classes and employed five different pottery graduates from a local university. 

Over the years, The Dixie team and I also worked diligently to raise the quality of the venue’s brand, the level of programming, and to create events downtown that spurred visiting our shops and restaurants. We knew through doing this, we were not only enhancing the quality of life for our community and the greater West TN area through the arts, but we were residually having an economic impact. In December of 2018, we landed a date with Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires, which really catapulted the status of our theatre. Tickets sold out in minutes, and we saw patrons would be attending from 16 different states. They would make their way from metropolitan cities such as Brooklyn, Charleston, and Denver, just to name a few. We knew this was a huge opportunity for not only The Dixie but the entire town. So, our Dixie staff gathered a group of leaders from the community to serve along with us, and we organized a weekend full of activities for the concert-goers. I sought out successful, high-quality online shops and artists to participate as pop-up shops along with our handful of existing brick and mortar retail shops. I convinced every building owner on the square that either didn’t have a current tenant or was an office building used only during normal work hours to let me have access and place pop-up shops inside their buildings. Lacking a fine-dining experience, I coerced the owners of an events space on the square to transform into a pop-up restaurant for the weekend. Fire-pits were placed around the square with live musicians providing holiday music in the background, and much more. 

By showtime, the town was buzzing, and we had people show up without tickets just to attend the activity. Isbell’s manager came in my office at one point, with his arms loaded down with shopping bags asking if I had been outside because it was absolutely amazing! He told me he got a lot of his Christmas shopping done, scored some bacon bourbon donuts, and talked with a bunch of really great young musicians playing in the cold around fire pits. It was amazing! Social media exploded with people from all over posting about their experience and this little hidden gem-of-a-town called Huntingdon, TN. During a total of eight hours that the event took place, our little downtown recorded a gross of $80,000. Store owners and vendors were ecstatic. Three buildings where pop-up shops were placed, soon after, became their brick-and-mortar store or were purchased and renovated into other businesses. Eventually, I picked up the title Arts and Events Director. This involved hosting the Annual Huntingdon Heritage Festival, Main Street Christmas, Full Moon Pickin’ Parties, and themed events in the downtown business district developed to connect with select shows on The Dixie schedule. 

As I started to see how my role in the arts played a part in the greater picture of community development, I began to pursue opportunities where I felt like I could make a difference and serve my community even more. In 2016, I was elected as a Carroll County Commissioner. Soon after, I was selected by Governor Haslam and the Delta Regional Authority to join participants from seven other states with an emphasis on furthering skills in community leadership and policy development to promote regional collaboration and local economic growth across DRA’s eight-state region. In the past, I have also served as chair of the Huntingdon Downtowns Steering Committee and as organizational co-leader with Mayor Dale Kelley for the Huntingdon Tomorrow Vision Council. 

In a matter of almost 15 years, it seems I have held the titles of ceramic artist, teaching professor, revitalization enthusiast, arts administrator, events director, town cheerleader, commissioner, and community/business developer. However, the title I’ve most proudly grown into during this time is that of mom. I’ve most recently starting consulting with Main Street TN towns and run a remote social media and brand management company that works mainly with small businesses. 

I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
I am really grateful for the path I’ve been on and the individuals who have been alongside me for it. It is key to surround yourself with people that know more than you and who are positive. You’re fortunate if this happens. I’ve had amazing educators, colleagues, and mentors over my professional career. When Mayor Dale Kelley gave me a job with the Town of Huntingdon, he was really starting me on an educational endeavor to learn civic leadership. Early on in my career at The Dixie, he began taking me along to meetings with him. At first, I would sit silently in discussions about potential business moving into our area or town matters having nothing to do with the arts, thinking to myself, “Why am I here? I am just the art lady.” He saw something in me before I ever knew it was there, and he taught me about the responsibility of a public servant and what it takes to accomplish things with the bigger picture in mind. That road is not an easy one because there will always be someone criticizing your efforts. You have to stay the course though, or they win! 

In rural community development projects that involve the arts, I think funding and not overwhelming your core leaders/staff are always challenges. Because you have to be such a hard driver to see things come to fruition, it can be absolutely exhausting on everyone. Also, there are only so many funding sources in areas with smaller populations, so you really have to navigate that carefully and utilize them wisely, while being creative about finding new resources. 

Thanks for sharing that. So, maybe next you can tell us a bit more about your work?
Growing up, my parents ingrained fundamentals of hard work and always doing your best, while also understanding you had a role to play as a member of a community. Before I was using my innate skill sets to cultivate creative placemaking as a tool for community development, I made my way into the arts by following exactly who God made me to be. 

I was always a creative kid, but growing up in a rural, mostly agricultural area, there weren’t many artists or art careers for one to look at and aspire to be like. When I was little, I could be spotted attending my siblings’ sporting events with a box of markers and a drawing pad in tow. An avid doodler through years of note-taking in school or while talking on the phone, I would get called on to sketch out designs for scenery in the theatre program at school and such. One of the last summers I played travel ball as a teenager, I was asked to create the logo and choose our team’s uniform designs. It was apparent I had an ability to do something that not many others are capable of, but still, a career in the arts was not something that presented itself as an option for me. 

I found my way into ceramic art at the university I was attending on an athletic scholarship for undergrad. My work gave me the opportunity to attend the New York State College of Ceramics in Alfred, NY for post-baccalaureate work. I went on to receive my M.F.A. from the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia, where I also served as a teaching assistant in the study abroad program in Cortona, Italy. Right out of graduate school, I accepted a teaching position at Union University, bringing me back to the area I was raised. 

My ceramic work mostly consist of wheel-thrown and altered sculptural objects that deal with multiple layers of carved surfaces. I feel like I am in my sweet spot when I get to work in the details. I also really thrive when I get to find ways to connect my love for clay as a medium with collaborations in nontraditional ways in the school system or out in the public sector. In the past, I have gone into numerous schools at worked with varying age levels to connect clay projects with their curriculum. For several years, I also made the participant medals and awards for a local triathlon in our county. During the process, I enlisted classrooms of K-12 students to assist me in making and glazing. I also partnered with students from Carroll Academy, an Adolescent Intensive Day Treatment Program operated by the Carroll County Juvenile Court that serves five counties in West TN. Woven into this experience would always be a lesson with the students about how something like a triathlon can bring people into your town to stay, eat, shop, and connect with the area. In this project, they were taught how to write encouragement notes to the participants that would soon be coming to participate. This race was voted Tennessee’s Friendliest Race as a result. 

I am most proud of playing my part in helping to make a community stronger for future generations. If I can play my part in successfully enhancing the arts, entertainment, and tourism sectors, more people will want to visit and live in our community. I think this also played a part in seeing young professionals moving back to the area and raising families. They become involved citizens and then you have this network of people actively participating in developing the future of your community. 

A quality I have that sets me apart from others is how I always see the potential in something. Whether it is a marred-up piece of clay, an old run-down building, a child that just needs an opportunity to thrive, or a community that needs some positive energy poured into it to become the place it can be, I am able to see the steps to get there and help to motivate others in that process too. 

What was your favorite childhood memory?
I’m blessed to have so many of them. I loved my childhood, but the influence of my parents on my life is probably the best memories I have and why I am the person I am today. I can still see myself as a little girl getting out of my mom’s baby blue Oldsmobile and walking up to a house, holding out a red Folgers coffee can. My mom was in charge of the Mansfield Community Flower Fund, which meant periodically I helped her gather donations for the flowers she would send to the funeral home on behalf of our community when one of its members passed. This unincorporated community in rural West Tennessee was made up of around 750 people, and it is where both my parents were born and raised. Growing up there, I knew most everyone because I was either related to them, went to church with them, or went to school with the kids in their family. There is a vivid picture that lives in my mind, walking into the kitchen of my childhood home with an outstretched phone cord making its way from one side of the room to my mom standing at the stove on the other. In a backdrop of steam rising from whatever she was stirring and the whistling of a pressure cooker full of green beans, she would be on the phone organizing something for church, heading up a fundraiser for the community, or delegating tasks for the parent-teacher organization at school. My mom was a doer, who led people with her enthusiasm and a keen ability to make people feel it was their duty to join in and accomplish something to help their neighbor. 

My dad was a fireman and on his off days, he was an electrician. As a hardworking provider he would never call himself artistic, but he was gifted with innate skills to fix or come up with creative solutions to any need we had. There are countless examples of things he created, for what he saw as just needing to solve a problem at our house or on the land. However, they always far surpassed mere functionality of “what a good ole country boy should be able to do.” Details and an aesthetic approach were always worked into these projects. From a series of bridges that cross small streams on the family land, the welded-barrel-wood-burning system he came up with that heated our home, furniture made for the house, or the coke bottle watering system put on each tomato plant for slow watering during the summer, there was always an artistic MacGyver-esque type approach. 

A huge influence on my approach to life comes from growing up in this tight-knit community, surrounded by close family and people who were daily contributing to making the world around them better for their children and others. 

Contact Info:

• Email: [email protected]
• Website: https://www.dixiepac.net/
• Instagram: @dixiepac @lilocompany
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dixiepac ; https://www.facebook.com/LiLoandCompany
• Other: https://www.downtownhuntingdontn.com/

Image Credits
Mikaela Allen
Joel Washburn