Newcastle potter and art teacher Liz Proffetty stands by her handmade mugs on the morning of Monday, April 15, in her Damariscotta ceramics studio Neighborhood Clay. “Clay is infinitely complicated,” Proffetty said. “There is an endless learning curve.” (Molly Rains photo)
Newcastle potter and teacher Liz Proffetty knows that a lump of fresh clay is potential made manifest. In creative hands, it can become anything from a practical object to a work of art or a combination of the two.
But beautiful pots and dishes are, to Proffetty, just one example of the medium’s endless potential.
As the owner of Neighborhood Clay ceramics studio in Damariscotta, a teacher who has taught art at several area schools, and a ceramic artist herself, Proffetty shares her love of clay on a daily basis, using the medium to access and inspire creativity, catharsis, and growth along the way.
“What keeps me going is a need to keep learning and keep growing. Clay offers that for me more than any other medium,” Proffetty said on the morning of Monday, April 15, in the studio space at Neighborhood Clay.
Sunlight fell onto the shelves around her as she spoke, landing on an array of art tools, supplies, and Proffetty’s own finished pots, which shine with the gentle colors of Maine marshes and seascapes.
Proffetty’s love of ceramics, she said, has been a constant throughout her adult life. She first discovered the medium around the same time that she fell in love with Maine: during her college years, while studying at the Maine College of Art and Design in the late 1980s.
Though she had initially planned to study printmaking, Proffetty said that the technical, procedural process of pottery appealed to her.
“I liked learning the technical side, the chemistry of it,” she said.
Then, she continued, the unpredictability of clay, which seemed to persist despite all of Proffetty’s training and attention to detail, captivated her.
“I’m very tenacious. Once I start on something, I have to keep doing it and getting it right – but with ceramics, there is no getting it right,” Proffetty said. “Clay has a way of always sort of coming back to humble you.”
After graduating with a double major in ceramics and printmaking, Proffetty moved to the Midcoast to become a potter at Damariscotta Pottery, a job she held for 18 years.
Moving to the Midcoast as a young adult in the early 1990s was isolating at first, Proffetty said. On weekdays, she made pots; during weekends, she traveled to Portland to see art school friends and enjoy a bigger social scene.
However, said Proffetty, the birth of her two daughters – Eve and Lyla Corbett, now 25 and 22 – catalyzed her introduction to a more connected side of the Midcoast.
“Having children opened me up to the community,” she said. Today, her love and gratitude for the community Proffetty found here is one of the reasons she says she has stayed put in Maine.
“Maine roped me in with its beauty – and the Midcoast, in particular, with its community,” she said.
Proffetty studied for teaching certificates in K-12 art and elementary education around the time her children were born, beginning her long involvement in local schools and educational organizations as an art teacher.
Over the course of Proffetty’s career in teaching, she has worked with people of all ages from across Lincoln County and beyond.
“I love the idea of passing this knowledge along,” she said of teaching ceramic techniques.
Some of Proffetty’s past roles include teaching art at Damariscotta Montessori School, where her own children attended; a seven-year stint as ceramics and art teacher at Lincoln Academy; and helping to run Watershed Ceramics’ mobile pottery van, a traveling ceramics studio bringing the art form to learners of all ages across the state.
“Now, the kids I taught at Lincoln Academy are all grown adults and business owners around here. It’s really fun. I still fondly remember them all,” she said.
Proffetty began her current role as an art teacher at Wiscasset Elementary School in 2019.
“We’re the oddballs,” Proffetty said, aware that art teachers tend to be known for their quirkiness. But she also knows, she said, that in her role she has a unique opportunity to get to know each student and introduce them to creative practice.
“I teach every kid in the school, every year they’re in the school,” she said. “I love the kids, and I think they like me, too.”
Proffetty teaches a wider range of ages at Neighborhood Clay, where she runs multi-week courses in ceramics for learners of all abilities and ages 14 and up, offers pottery painting sessions, and displays and sells her own pots.
Proffetty founded the studio in 2017, hoping to create a physical space in which she could share her passion for clay.
“It was my goal to create a place where people could come experience the community and the therapeutic qualities of working with clay and just have fun,” Proffetty said.
No matter one’s ability, she added, working with clay can be an illuminating experience.
“Clay teaches acceptance,” Proffetty said. “We have to accept that we’re not going to be perfect, that it’s not going to always go the way you expect.”
That’s because of the unpredictable nature of clay, which can crack or warp in the kiln or shatter if mishandled. That capriciousness, which fascinated Proffetty from the start, means that practicing pottery is also a way of familiarizing oneself with loss, she said.
That, coupled with the hands-on nature of pottery, can be therapeutic, Proffetty said. The art form, she suggested, is a physical and emotional outlet that yields real, tangible products.
“Pottery brings to our lives a sense of the handmade,” she said, calling it a lesson in creativity and persistence.
“I always tell people that you just have to keep passing the material through your hands. That’s the only way to get better,” she said.
Proffetty herself practices whenever she can, making her own pots that are inspired by the natural beauty of Maine.
“I am really taken by the colors in this area,” she said.
Unsurprisingly, Proffetty doesn’t have much time to herself outside the studio or classroom. She spends her free time with her family and her dogs, Franz and Eddie, who also accompany Proffetty to the studio on occasion.
Moving forward, she said, Proffetty plans to experiment with more media – but always, she said, she will continue to make pots.
When it comes to working with clay, “I think you’d have to remove my arms for me to stop,” she said.
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