Today we’d like to introduce you to Ashley Konzmann.
Hi Ashley, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I am an artist and a yoga studio co-owner. I was always drawn to visual arts since childhood. This passion led to me studying art and eventually pursue an MFA in Sculpture, which I will complete at the end of this year. My primary medium is clay, though I have extensive experience in painting, drawing, and printing. I have also recently learned book binding and paper making.
I started my own my own pottery business back in 2015 and have mostly produced work for sale online and at some markets early on, as well as fulfilled commissions for local cafes and plant nurseries. I am lucky to have been able to ship my pottery all over the world! I began a hiatus from full time studio work back in 2021 when I began to teach art at Oxnard High School as a credentialed teacher. I taught full time until last year when my son, Noah, was born. I left the teaching position to care for my new baby, focus on completing my masters degree, and open The Yoga Studio.
In the throes of pregnancy, I completed yoga teacher training and decided to open a yoga studio with a trusted colleague. We opened our doors in Camarillo in June 2025. Classes are ongoing and we are always wanting to add qualified teachers to our team.
One thing I am excited about is blending my interests. I created a Yin & Clay class that fuses my love for clay and yoga. I queue participants into yin poses where we use props and sandbags to support the postures. While holding the poses, I give simple instructions to guide everyone through the creation of vessels using clay. After the class, I glaze and fire the work so participants can have a keepsake from the experience that will last many lifetimes.
I am looking forward to finishing my degree this year so I can focus on raising my son, create my art, and work on the yoga business.
Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
No way! I have made so many mistakes as a business owner, school teacher, and every other role I have played in between. My husband and I made things even more complicated when we decided to move to his hometown in Germany during 2020 while covid was in full swing. I still managed to set up a makeshift space to create pottery in our two different apartments in Germany and still sell to my international supporters. It sounds crazy when I think about it now. I think people think that it’s the dream to stay home and make art all day. But the reality is that you are alone most of the time unless you work in a community studio. Sharing a space has its own challenges; Renting studio space was a big factor in trying to make it work, and still work, on my own. But back then for me, feeling stuck inside all day in a foreign country wasn’t an emotionally healthy way to live.
Things felt so bleak while in Germany. I felt isolated (because we all were), and began looking for work outside the home teaching English and even applying for data entry positions. With no luck, I began applying for teaching positions back home in California. I had completed my teaching credential in secondary education a couple years prior to moving, so my efforts continued in that direction. I was able to interview on zoom from Germany and ultimately accepted a job at Oxnard High School. After almost exactly a year in Germany, I moved back to California and began my first year teaching high school Art. I took on more than I should have, including coaching water polo and beginning my master’s degree during my second year teaching. I started yoga teacher training during my third year of teaching after having practiced yoga for over 20 years on my own.
After a couple more years of 12 hour work days, I got pregnant. It was easy for me to decide to leave the teaching job because I was so burnt out and having a hard time enjoying the work with all the political junk and fearing for my safety that comes with teaching in a public high school. But it was difficult navigating the finances and understanding the health benefits of the job to carry me through the pregnancy and birth. Ultimately I needed to focus on my health and manage my stress. My husband and I had to adjust to the loss of income. It hasn’t been easy.
But shortly after completing yoga teacher training during all that, one of my colleagues in the training, Allie (also a teacher who left her teaching job to pursue The Yoga Studio), and I had the vision to open a studio in Camarillo where we completed our training. Our teacher was looking to step out of her role as a studio owner, leaving Camarillo without a single yoga studio. After a lot of prayer and meetings and doubts, we decided to just go for it. Opening our doors meant lots of late nights meeting after Allie finished teaching for the day (she wouldn’t quit until the summer) to fix up the space we found. It was a lot of work figuring out contracts, logistics, admin, payroll, and now we’re in a struggle with permits because we originally wanted our studio to offer Aerial Yoga but it’s been a lot of back and forth with the city to get those plans approved for our hammocks. Right now, we’ve hit a financial obstacle because we are still new and profits have not reached a point where we can spend the money to pay an architect to draw plans for us to submit to the city for our aerial hammocks. The challenges keep on coming!
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I have been known for creating pottery with colors and forms inspired by the ocean because I am an avid surfer and have ancestral roots tied to the sea. I am most proud of my glaze colors that decorate the surface of my works because I created them on my own, spending years at this point mixing and testing the various combinations. I am hoping to expand my portfolio now that I have spent the last several years studying sculpture and venturing more into that world.
My current series, “Ocean Rituals,” consists of organic ceramic sculptures and wall pieces that explore spiritual and meditative characteristics of an ocean-centered life. Connection with the sea is rooted in my maternal heritage and perpetuated through my practice of surfing. I am obsessed with the weightless feeling that only gliding on waves provides, while viscerally absorbing the textures, colors, and smells of the coastline. It is this feeling, coupled with the weight of my ancestral history, that goes beyond my physical reality and pushes me to contemplate a sacred connection that I feel with the sea. I am able to investigate what is normally just a feeling through working tactilely with clay, a humble and traditionally foraged material, and visualize my impressions into material reality. For example, flowing kelp bulb clusters which so often entangle my surfboard inspired me to showcase the sensation of calming, gentle movement in water in my pieces, “Current Swirl” and “Sea Motion.” I try to think about how I can use repetition to create movement and rhythm. I choose a form to focus on, like kelp bulbs, and make many of them, and then see how I can arrange them in a way to evoke the movement of water.
The tide pools where I surf serve as a major point of inspiration when I think about the daily cycle of the rising and lowering tides. To me, the daily ritual of the movement of the tides mirrors the human experience: submersion and exposure, rest and work, stillness and motion. I think about the significance and simplicity of this naturally occurring rhythm of the earth. I draw a parallel between the ebb and flow of life with the circular journey that begins with my ancestors quite literally living off the land by the sea in South Korea through fishing and foraging, to the current privilege I have of playing in waves.
The concept of ritual is explored through repetition of forms inspired by a variety of textures found in the coastal landscape. I think of my mother and her siblings as children, my aunts and uncles, scouring the beaches day after day for clams, mussels, and seaweed, a ritual born out of necessity. My piece, “Sunset Cycle,” displays many shiny golden barnacles in various sizes and stages of life inhabiting a vessel with an open portal and undulating surface in the colors of a vibrant sunset. In this piece, I wanted to highlight the stillness of the moment of a day lived in fullness, preceding a future full of possibility. It is my vision for my work to draw upon my family history that is filled with scenic hardship and create a bridge to my current circumstances where I recognize the privilege of enjoying the ocean for its beauty.
Are there any apps, books, podcasts, blogs or other resources you think our readers should check out?
I am a fan of the Dr. John Deloney Show and Culture Apothecary. I feel like I’m surrounded by people, including myself, who have a lot of unresolved issues around adverse events stemming from childhood and that I’d like to help be part of breaking those cycles. So I like to listen to mental health professionals speak on these topics. I was also very close to abandoning my study of art when I hit a crossroads around the time I finished college in order to study naturopathic medicine. So I find the guests on Culture Apothecary really interesting to listen to regarding health and wellness.
The only book I’m consistently reading these days is my Bible. But I have borrowed wisdom from The Artist’s Way and The Four Agreements in the past. Other than that I am studying some books on yin yoga. I’m currently personally wrestling with the debate surrounding yoga and Christianity. I think it’s important to constantly reevaluate my perspective as I grow and learn.
Contact Info:
- Website: ashleylaurenceramics.com and theyogastudio805.com
- Instagram: @ashleylaurenceramics, @theyogastudio805
Image Credits
All images were taken by me.
