Every Motawi art tile passes through many skilled hands before it's finished. For the last five years, Anissa Keeler's have been among them.
As one of Motawi's bulb glazers, Anissa spends her days carefully filling each handcrafted tile with vibrant color, one squeeze at a time. It's work that demands patience, precision, and just enough repetition to make room for a good audiobook.
Recently, Anissa also stepped into the role of designer, winning Motawi's third Second Studio competition with Winterberry—a graceful winter branch inspired by snowy landscapes and the quiet beauty of the season.
We caught up with Anissa to talk about glazing, ceramics, audiobooks, Winterberry, and what it's like to help bring thousands of handcrafted tiles to life.
What do you do at Motawi?
I'm a bulb glazer.
I like telling people it's color by number. Obviously it's more than that, but essentially what I do is color by number, which is really fun. It takes some effort to get used to the material and to be able to do it well, but it is a really fun job.
What does a typical day look like?
Usually when I get in, I pick my tiles for the day, or at least a couple cards' worth of tiles. I like being able to know what I'm going to do for the day.
The choices are based on priorities—what we're running out of, what's most popular, and what needs to be replenished—but it's also somewhat dependent on which ones I actually like doing.
Do you have favorite tiles?
I do. My favorites are kind of dependent on which ones I can do with the least scraping. I'm pretty good at glazing, but I'm also kind of a perfectionist with it. I scrape all the lines.
Some of the complicated tiles are funny because people don't all dislike the same ones. I would've thought we'd all gravitate toward the same favorites, but we don't. I love the woodland ones because the way the tile is designed is very intuitive for how I can move my hand, so it works out well.
To be fair, though, right when I started, I hated those tiles too. It's just what you get better at.
Is there one tile that nobody wants?
The Wood Duck. Nobody wants to do that one. It's just a lot of little spaces, and scraping really is the most time-consuming aspect. It's tedious. It's a lot of making sure you scraped everything and switching between tools and stuff like that.
What keeps you company while you're glazing?
Audiobooks. I used to listen to music, but my brain gets tired of music after a while. That's really the struggle with bulb glazing—the monotony of it and entertaining your brain.
Last year I went through more than a hundred books. This year I've been listening to Brandon Sanderson. The one I just finished was 62 hours long.
That's my favorite part. I can kind of disconnect my brain and do something else entirely. I still have to think about what I'm doing, but after a while there's a lot of muscle memory involved.
You have a background in ceramics. What were you doing before Motawi?
I went to Alma College. I have a degree in ceramics, but I really was a mixed-media kind of student.
My senior thesis project was a children's book. I wrote the story originally as a poem in high school in a creative writing class. Later I decided I wanted to write and illustrate children's books, so I illustrated the book and then recreated all the pictures in ceramic and mixed media. The fish in the book became a giant sculpture. I made a ceramic gecko, a little Loch Ness monster, a tea set—a whole bunch of pieces inspired by the story.
I also got a degree in business administration because I figured if I was going to be an artist, I'd need to know how to market my work and do the business side of things too.
You recently won our Second Studio design competition with Winterberry. Tell us about it.
It's been really fun.
A lot of people ask if I get to design anything at Motawi, and I've always been like, "No, I just color by number." So having Second Studio is really cool because now I can say yes.
I've entered all three competitions and made it to the finals every time, so it's exciting to finally have one win.
Winterberry started because the competition was looking for a holiday design. We already have a lot of Christmas-specific tiles, and I wanted to create something that felt like winter in general.
One of the things I really like about winter is seeing bright red berries against the snow. I love that contrast. My brother and sister-in-law have Motawi address tiles and wanted one for every season, and I realized we didn't really have a winter design that wasn't tied directly to Christmas.
So I started looking at winter berry branches and thinking about how to simplify that visual and make it work as a tile. Originally I was planning to include snowflakes and maybe a mouse, but the more I worked on it, the more I realized I just liked the branch itself.
What I found most interesting is that you're not just designing a tile. You're designing art, but you're designing art that is a tile. There's a translation there that needs to be made.
The thing with art that I like is that there's no limit to what you can possibly do. However, that gets very daunting. Having some parameters allows you to actually be really creative. For me, the requirement that a design has to translate into a tile is just enough of a guideline. That's where I thrive—having a guideline, but being able to take that guideline and do what I want with it.
What's something you've learned from working at Motawi?
Patience.
One thing that was really interesting was helping in shipping during the holidays. The struggle with glazing is that you're always trying to maintain stock, but there's no real context for where that stock is going. You are fighting to keep things in stock while that stock just keeps disappearing into the void.
Being in shipping was different. I could see a name. I could see where the tile was going. I could see that it was going all over the world. I obviously knew that conceptually, but actually being part of that was really exciting.
Do you ever spot Motawi tile around town?
All the time. I do a lot of running, so whenever I run around the neighborhood and see all of the address tiles, my favorite thing is seeing how many I can spot.
Recently I was with my partner and his realtor, and she found out I worked at Motawi. She immediately said, "Oh my God, I love Motawi tile."
That was the first time something like that had happened to me. When people know Motawi, they know and love Motawi!
Before we wrap up, is there anything else you'd like people to know?
I don't know if it fits into any of the questions, but if you're trying to show who we are as a group, I want to mention that I am hard of hearing.
It's genetic. My mom has it, her mom had it, my aunt has it, cousins have it, and my brother has it. I've had hearing loss since I was seven.
The fact that I can work here and that it doesn't really impact what I do is really cool. Over the course of being here, the company has worked with me to make sure I can still participate in meetings and everything else.
Lightning (Bug) Round
Morning person or night owl?
In college I was a night owl all the way. I would stay up all night to do art stuff. But somehow I ended up being a morning person anyway, so I'm a morning person—but not willfully.
Coffee, tea, or something stronger?
Hot chocolate. I actually don't do well with caffeine at all. Whenever I have coffee or caffeine, I turn into a zombie. I'm awake, but I'm not focused at all.
Favorite Motawi tile?
I like Koi Pond, with all its swirls. I also really like Ronan's Jellyfish tile because the artists are my friends!
If your job were a Motawi tile?
Probably Rainbow Saguaro. I feel like it is very structured, but I get to work with all the colors.
One word to describe Motawi?
Eclectic.
Any audiobook recommendations?
- Fantasy: Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson
- Sci-fi: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
- Folklore: The Bear and the Nightingale trilogy by Katherine Arden
- Mystery: Everyone in My Family Has Killed Someone by Benjamin Stevenson
- Fantasy: The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
- Fiction: Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
- Middle Grade: The Mysterious Benedict Society series by Trenton Lee Stewart
- YA Mystery: Firekeeper's Daughter by Angeline Boulley
Thanks, Anissa!
Whether she's patiently glazing a woodland scene, designing a winter branch that captures the quiet beauty of the season, or disappearing into a great audiobook while she works, Anissa brings thoughtfulness and care to everything she does.
Congratulations again on Winterberry, and thanks for giving us a glimpse into the creative mind behind both the glaze bulb and the design pencil.
