Ellie Richards is an artist combining sculpture and functional objects to explore how domesticity shapes our connection to place, others, and ourselves. Working between sculpture, craft, and design, she combines traditional woodworking and readymade elements to make assemblages, installations, and unconventional furniture.
Her work examines how labor, leisure, and play inform cultural expression and how objects carry shared values and tacit knowledge. Believing craft is both a tool and a medium for meaning, she invites interaction, contemplation, and delight to deepen relations between people and their environments.
Her work is part of the Museum for Art in Wood collection. She has exhibited at the Mint Museum, Center for Craft, SOFA Chicago, and Society of Contemporary Craft. She’s held Windgate funded residencies at the Center for Art in Wood, San Diego State University, and University of Wisconsin–Madison, and completed the three year Resident Artist program at Penland School of Craft. She teaches woodworking and creative practice nationwide and is a lecturer at California State University Long Beach. She lives and works in Los Angeles, maintaining her practice at LA Woodshop.