Like Mother, Like Daughter
by Jill Duff-Hoppes
Anissa and Avery Dyen have a long list of art classes they’ve taken together; welding, glassblowing, and Japanese indigo dyeing, to name a few. But it wasn’t until they began working with clay that the mother daughter duo found their creative niche.
“We do everything – this is just kind of the thing that has stuck for the longest,” says Avery with a laugh.
Avery, 27, and Anissa, 56, are Maitland residents and co-founders of Blue Flower Ceramics, a handmade pottery business they launched last year. Together, the ceramicists make everything form whimsical garden totems to planters and vases to animal figures and floral sculptural pieces. They also create Judaica artwork that includes menorahs and dreidels, building and painting each piece by hand as a team. In fact, it’s hard to tell where Anissa’s work ends and Avery’s begins.
“One of us will start on thing, and then the other will finish it,” says Anissa.
The pair began their mutual clay journey about three years ago, when the started taking classes in hand-building pottery. Artistic talent is not a new thing for their family, though.
“My [maternal] grandmother is an oil painter,” says Avery. “And my mom’s super-good at crafts and is very artistic. So, art has always been a very big part of our lives.”
As careers, however, Anissa and Avery pursued paths outside the art world. Anissa, a former elementary school teacher, is now a board-certified behavior analyst who works wit students diagnosed with autism. Avery, a graduate of Florida State University’s law school, is a lawyer with a firm in Orlando. For both, making art is a way to decompress and unwind after long days at their respective jobs.
“Art is a really big outlet for us,” says Anissa, “and a way for us to do something together.”
It’s easy for the two to collaborate after work and on weekends, because Avery lives in a studio apartment on her parents’ property, where she and her mom have a spacious art studio and a small kiln. But they’re not the only Dyens involved with Blue Flower Ceramics. The family’s dogs, Marti and Lincoln, have full run of the studio, where they supervise the proceedings. And Scott Dyen, husband to Anissa and father to Avery, is a pharmacy manager by day and a supportive art assistant after hours.
“He’s our kiln tech and helps with assembly,” says Anissa. “He’s also an incredible salesman.”
Anissa’s work is inspired by her passion for travel and the museums and gardens she has visited around the world. Avery is inspired by the beauty of nature and enjoys fostering deeper connections between people and the objections they use and display.
Both women are members of The Pottery Studio, operated by the City of Orlando, and have exhibited their artwork there and at The Orlando Pottery Festival, Maitland Art Center, Crealdé School of Art in Winter Park, the Lake County Plant & Pottery Festival, and a Hanukkah market at a local synagogue.
Anissa and Avery began participating in shows in late 2024 for a practical reason – they’d made so much art that they were running out of places to store everything.
“We were giving it away for a while,” says Avery, who jokes that the recipients’ enthusiasm eventually waned. To which Anissa chimes in with a laugh, “It was like, ‘Okay, we have enough of your stuff.’”
And while mother and daughter are perfectionists when it comes to their artwork, their fans see nothing but beauty in their pieces.
”People are like, ‘Oh my gosh, I love this,’” says Anissa. “And we’re like, ‘Okay, so they don’t see the flaw that we see.’ So that’s super-exciting.”
Adds Avery, “It’s nice when something finds a new home. That’s really, really cool.”