Dobrilla Marinkovich’s pottery classroom is a minefield.
There’s clay everywhere — some even lobbed onto the ceiling. Half-finished pieces of work dot the landscape, some ready to be fired in the kiln, some already fired once, with others fired twice and now ready to be painted.
It’s a zone that no neat freak would feel comfortable in, but for Marinkovich and her students, it’s perfect.
“It looks disorganized,” Marinkovich said. “It can shock the administration.”
Marinkovich is in her fifth year teaching pottery at Thomas Jefferson High School and in her 10th year teaching art in general.
Her classes are full at 150 students each semester. Many students take the class over and over. She has two curriculums going at once for beginning and advanced students.
“They end up teaching the new kids,” Marinkovich said. “Those kids coming back is like a bonus. It strengthens their confidence.”
Marinkovich teaches both wheel and hand throwing pottery. Many students begin with the hand throwing, then move onto the much more difficult art of throwing the clay onto a spinning wheel to shape their pots and artwork.
“They get hooked,” she said. “They don’t want to let the clay beat them.”
Frankie Ditzhazy, a senior currently taking his fourth semester with Marinkovich, just started being able to center the clay on the wheel last week.
“It just took me a while to do it,” Ditzhazy said.
But Ditzhazy is now hooked. He started taking the class after a friend recommended it.
“I instantly fell in love,” he said. “It’s my niche, kind of. It gets better every semester. It’s like riding a bike; the more you do it, you get better.”
Dizthazy said he feels calmer after going to pottery, and it’s a good way to relieve the stress of the rest of the school day.
“You don’t have to think,” Ditzhazy said. “You can just go for hours.”
Although there may be clay everywhere, don’t worry — it’s just for a while. Any clay that hasn’t been fired twice gets put back into use by Marinkovich, who compiles the clay before putting it back in moldable working order.
