12 February 2014, Ella Robinson - "Colourful Creations"

Who says that lightening doesn’t strike twice? For the second month running travel in and around Oxford was disrupted by floods. None was more adversely affected than our speaker whose train journey from Brighton was diverted to Swindon. Given the difficulties, we would have fully understood if she had cancelled. To have had no speaker for the evening would have been disappointing but now that we know what we would have missed, we are delighted that Ella Robinson literally went the extra mile to tell us about herself and her work.

Canoe Cocktail, 2009, stranded cotton and driftwood, 15 x 8 x 2.5cm
© Ella Robinson

Ella was born in Brighton, and first realised her passion for art during experimental A-Level lessons. She found it more exciting to work three-dimensionally with found objects than to paint or draw. Ella went on to study Multi Media Textiles at Loughborough University, undertook a Master’s Degree at the Royal College of Art, London, where she studied Mixed Media Textiles all the while continuing with her principle of reuse and began to marry vibrant colours with striped imagery. Her summer show featured larger-scale pieces of both bought and drift wood, used in conjunction with purchased materials such as rayon thread, stranded cotton, and plastic tubing, to create vibrant and striped decorative objects and sculptural pieces. Since graduating, Ella has continued to combine found wood with more traditional textile media.

Pink Doily, 2010, pearl cotton and driftwood, 16 x 12 x 5cm
© Ella Robinson

An avid beach-comber, as well as drift wood Ella collects all manner of man made detritus washed up by the waves. Anything plastic is of particular interest. Ella takes all of her finds back to her bedroom in a share house that doubles as her studio. Here she washes and dries the items before sorting and storing them according to type and colour ready to reuse in her art. By her own admission, Ella is a habitual horder, and her small bedroom cum studio is overrun with boxes.

One Little Lie, 2011, pieces of found plastic and glass
© Ella Robinson