A college romance and a three-hour pottery class helped shape what would become a lifelong creative career for Robert and Sarah Johnson.
Robert first started joining his then-girlfriend at Salisbury University’s pottery studio simply because the couple wanted more time together. Before long, the two developed a friendly competition.
“She’d be like, ‘Here’s what I learned today.’ I’d do it and she’d be like, ‘Yours looks better than mine,’” Robert Johnson said. “So we had this kind of friendly competition. ”Pottery soon became more than a hobby. Johnson eventually spent about a decade as Salisbury University’s head 3D technician, sometimes spending 12 to 16 hours a day between his job and creating in the studio.
The couple’s professor, Marie Cavallaro, eventually encouraged them to try selling their work locally.
“We’re like, ‘We can’t sell our work. Have you seen this stuff?’” Johnson recalled. But people bought it.
After a few successful sales, the couple secured a trader’s license and launched Amused Studios in 2006. Twenty years later, their Fruitland studio has become a place for both their own work and introducing others to pottery.
Johnson says teaching allows him to pass along lessons that once took him months to understand.
“The pieces I have people walk out of the studio that they’ve made are pieces I wasn’t making for like nine, ten months after I started doing pottery.” For Johnson, the studio is now what he calls a “creative playground” that he and Sarah have built together.
“People who keep coming back, they start to find that calmness that clay brings with it,” he said. “It’s nice for us to be able to offer that.”