"Creations with soul,” reads white lettering stenciled on the front windows of Amano, a boutique in Montrose Collective owned by local concrete artist Myrna Hagelsieb. Once inside the pip-squeak spot, which has the particular distinction of being the smallest storefront in the development, you’re greeted by rustic tables and shelving holding a spattering of products from various makers—think handmade hats, purses, oils, and fragrances—as well as a colorful array of concrete artwork from the owner’s brand, Natural by Hagelsieb.

A native of Chihuahua, Mexico, Hagelsieb moved to Houston with her husband and two sons in 2015 after brief stints in Florida and Kansas. While Hagelsieb, who has a degree in business, was staying home with the children, she needed something else to occupy her time. “I realized that I had to do something for myself, so I started making planters,” she says. “When I started working with concrete, I realized I could do anything with it.” 

Hagelsieb is no stranger to the material. Her father worked in the laboratory of a cement company, where he would test and experiment with concrete. Growing up, she watched as he built cement tables and other objects for their home, on a small farm just outside the city of Chihuahua.

Following in his footsteps years later, Hagelsieb began experimenting with concrete mixtures at her own home, eventually turning the entire garage into her workspace. She wanted her mixture to be light but still sturdy, and after about a year of research (and many conversations with her father), she finally solidified one that met all of her artistic needs. To make concrete strong, sand and rocks are usually added to the mixture, but doing so makes the concrete quite heavy. Instead, Hagelsieb relies on a base of Portland cement to which she adds marble powder.

When Hagelsieb started creating her pieces, in 2017, she was just making them for friends and family, but she soon realized their marketability. She did her first market that same year, in Pasadena—a long drive from her home in Spring, but it ended up being a success. “The most important thing about that market for me is that people really appreciated the things that I had made and were very interested in my process,” she says. She sold at markets regularly for the next three years, until the pandemic hit and she pivoted to wholesale. Her online sales proved to be substantial, however, and her goods began popping up in shops all over the country, which led her to start thinking about opening a shop of her own.

Amano opened in the new Montrose Collective development in 2021, and, in the two years since, Hagelsieb has turned it into a mini sanctuary. Atop a large marble table that anchors the room, mixed in with the palo santo and incense, lie nearly a dozen different designs of Hagelsieb’s concrete incense burners, which are some of her best sellers. Featuring geometric shapes, many of them are reminiscent of the lines drawn in the sand of Japanese rock gardens and come in earthy shades of green, ochre, gray, black, and tan. Large wooden shelves hold an endless array of concrete planters, candleholders, trays, vases, and other home goods, all sporting Hagelsieb’s effortlessly simple, wabi-sabi design aesthetic. Mixed in with the soft geometric shapes are a few quirky items such as a concrete robot candleholder and some air plant–holding T. rex sculptures that look quite a bit like the powdery dinosaur multivitamins force-fed to many a ’90s kid.

In the back of the shop, beside a neon sign reading “The Good Intentions Bar,” an opening leads to a small studio space where Hagelsieb leads private workshops teaching people incense making, a passion she’s had since she was a child. Although she says she still prefers being in her garage studio crafting her unique creations, she’s started to feel more at home as she’s settled into Amano, and has been overwhelmed by the community’s support and enthusiasm for her concrete goods.

“This is my safe space. I love to be here,” Hagelsieb says about her new shop. “I started making my concrete art because it’s something I loved to do, and I love to see how people react to the different art that I have here. The community here in Houston has been very welcoming of me.”