Annelise Rosas’ growing-up years in Monterrey and Austin left a yearning for another city of her youth.

Brownsville is the place where Rosas feels the most comfortable. The Rio Grande Valley’s largest city is the best fit for the interchange of languages she speaks. In Monterrey, Rosas was seen as an American and a bit of an outcast despite being the daughter of Mexican-born parents. The view of her in Austin was the opposite, a “Mexican kid” living in Texas, she said. 

“I didn’t feel like I belonged there,” Rosas said of Austin, where she graduated from high school. “I never felt like I was part of the community.”

In time, after getting married and experiencing other parts of the United States, she settled in Brownsville. It is where her artistic ambitions and cultural identity have found the perfect match. 

“I have the best of both worlds here,” Rosas said at her pottery studio in Brownsville. “It has become my place. I have a great fondness for Brownsville.”

Adding Artistic Element

The space of art in Brownsville that is the Annebrije Pottery Studio reflects Rosas’ Mexican and American influences.

It’s where she gets to practice and teach her craft and host resident artists. Her background and training include attending a pottery school in Guadalajara and having artistic residencies at studios in Las Vegas and Springfield, Mo. The latter city is where Rosas learned the mechanics of managing a business and picked up basics such as where to purchase supplies. 

Returning to the Valley in 2023, she set out to apply what she had learned and start the process of launching a new business. Rosas took the last half of 2023 to convert a storage building into an open-air studio with display space for pottery products she and her students create. Her main mission, however, is to teach the craft and provide Brownsville with an added artistic element.

“I felt like there wasn’t a place to do pottery in Brownsville,” Rosas said. “My goal was to bring pottery to Brownsville for people here to try it out.”

‘So Much Here’

And that they are.

A busy month at Annebrije will include four classes a week to go with resident artists busy at work with their projects. Two resident artists at Annebrije – Melissa Cortes and Marlon Rocael – recently held the studio’s first art exhibition. Thus far, the majority of Rosas’ students are female and in their 20s and 30s. She hopes as Annebrije gets further settled after opening in early 2024 that the studio can attract a wider array of students.

Monthly memberships are also available. The students with memberships have 24-hour access to the studio and receive ongoing instruction from Rosas. There is a kiln onsite to fire clay and porcelain into pottery, with many of the products requiring multiple burns. 

Her path to doing what she loves comes after an initial foray into the medical field and following the footsteps of her parents, who are doctors. 

Rosas is delighted in having a pottery-based business in the community that has welcomed her.

“I feel there is so much here,” Rosas said. “The mix of languages where you can speak English or Spanish and be accepted. I like that people here have worked their way up. There’s very little entitlement here. I feel like these are my people.”

Annebrije Pottery Studio is located at 704 Paredes Line Road, Suite G5 in Brownsville.