Housewife with a creative flair is a rare bird

Burlington Gazette Thursday, April 12, 1973 Housewife with a creative flair is a rare bird By Mary Orde Burlington Arts guild member Mavis Ehlert is probably unique among housewives. In addition to running a home and looking after a family, she is a fulltime sculptor and therefore possibly as rare as the White plaster birds that she creates. Her studio takes up most of the small garden at her home and is the setting for her work filled production days. For the last ten years she has scheduled herself a nine to five routine, devoted to sculpture. When it isn’t possible, she fits it in during the afternoon and evening. “After all, I’d be working those hours if I had a job outside the home,” she says. When her three children were still small, Mrs. Ehlert’s creations were scaled down to fit the time available. She did small Figures from Alice in Wonderland and Wind in the Willows and the occasional larger sculptured head. But with less family responsibility, she gradually extended her scope and range, and now she is well known for human figures, Including children. She is interested in abstraction and producing that work on a large scale. She made a series of bird forms in plaster and fiberglass. These were featured in her recent one-man show at Hamilton Art Gallery. Most significant tribute to Mavis Ehlert’s standing in the community as an artist and sculptor of note. The bird forms were an inspiration that evolved from a Walt Disney show. “It began as a dramatic moment in the story when a long lost dove returned to its mate.” She made small plaster maquettes of two doves and gradually the idea became more abstract and enlarged in scope. The bird forms are graceful, curving flowing abstract compositions with interesting hollows and holes emphasizing interplay between light and shadow. Some birds are so large that three people are needed to move them. Some can be broken down for transportation. The size does not make the birds forbidding. Mavis Ehlert’s cats enjoy curling up in the shelter of the platform of the larger birds. Such lack of reverence for art does not upset Mavis. A quiet and unassuming person, she accepts philosophically that her own fascination with form and composition is not shared as yet with the wider public which now exists for the colour and excitement of painting. But she believes awareness and appreciation is growing towards sculpture. “I’d like to see more sculpture in public buildings,” she said. “Most buildings desperately need something three dimensional to offset the starkness.” So when a public board or group decides on a piece of sculpture as a permanent feature of a building, she is delighted. For instance, a charming young girl of bronze rests on a rock outside the Ancaster Public Library. “There is a story about that rock.” Mavis explains. “The organizers decided that a large rock was needed to be a pedestal for the figure. Various lakes and beaches from out of the area were discussed as possible sources of a suitable rock. But the bulldozers were already at work excavating for the site of the library. The next morning after my discussion with the committee, the machines turned up a lovely big boulder, which turned out to be exactly suitable.” The Ancaster Library bronze was a 1967 centennial gift purchased by the garden club.