When a young Liz Proffetty watched Mr. Rogers visit a pottery studio, she was fascinated with the potter throwing clay on the wheel. Always creative, Proffetty tried to make a pottery wheel using her Barbie record player and some homemade clay. She’s not sure that first pot turned out so well, but it inspired a lifelong love of art. Years later, Proffetty opened a pottery studio, Neighborhood Clay and, like Mr. Rogers, teach children and adults valuable lessons in life and art.

In an interview one day before Christmas vacation and a day after the Winter Gallery of the Arts, Proffetty lit up as she talked about her students’ work, her passion for ceramics, and the joy her students bring her. Joining Wiscasset Elementary School this school year, Proffetty brought 20 years of teaching and artistry to her art teacher job. She’s also taught at Lincoln Academy and Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts. As a teacher of pre-K through fifth grade at WES and as an instructor at her studio, she teaches all the way from pre-K through 80 years old. “There’s something to be gained from all of them, and children are so open to learning and to trying.”

From clay to printmaking, to art history lessons, she believes in teaching the students skills they can use when they move on to Wiscasset Middle High School. “I want them to come up with drawing skills and an understanding of color and perspective and things like that so that they’re feeling prepared to enter a choice-based (art) program,” she said.

High school art teachers helped foster her love of art. “When I got to high school, like so many kids, I was sort of unsettled, and I wasn’t thriving academically. It was my high school art teacher who I say saved my life, who kind of took me under his wing and said, ‘You know what you need? You need to go to art school.’” She also credits those teachers with inspiring her to teach: She saw how they were changing lives. “Teaching is a little bit of a way to give back.”

Proffetty is from the Boston area. She attended Maine College of Art (then Portland School of Art), then moved to the Midcoast. In her first few years of work at Damariscotta Pottery, she was often asked if she taught. Eventually, she decided to pursue a teaching certificate. “I love children. I just love teaching little kids…teaching art is great because I’m the happy place…I get to be one of the best things they get to do.”

So what is her favorite part of the day? Bus duty! “I love when the kids come in in the morning...I see them coming off the bus and the little ones come over and give me a hug or just say hi…there’s just a lot of optimism for the day.”