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Sunlight filtered in through the curtainless windows of Juliet Ehrlich’s Louisville living room. Bas-relief sculptures and other of her creations filled her bright yellow walls.
More light is needed to really see the work, so the artist fetched a small lamp and shined it around the carved clay protrusions.
Shadowy details emerged in the brightness.
Smoke from a relief molding of French painter Claude Monet shimmered as if taking to the breeze. Swirls of a Spanish door segment deceived the eye, the painted lows and highs of the sculpture mimicking metal.
For a half of a century, Ehrlich’s artwork has evolved. Pottery, first. Then, clay and tiles and carved etchings leading to the bas-reliefs that fill this space; painting and sculpting and watercolors all a part of her artist’s journey.
“One exploration engenders another,” Ehrlich said. “It builds another door of curiosity.”
But new paths continue for the 68-year-old.
In a corner, near an antique Italian chair and a flowering bonsai tree, Ehrlich employs all her artistic skills to mend broken antiques and contemporary art.
Her enterprise, Restoration Conservation, deals mostly in decorative porcelain, stone ware and earthenware, but also metal and wood.
This venture is a natural outgrowth of her lifelong creative endeavors.
“I’ve been doing this for decades, and now I’m putting them all together, in a path, whose sort of side streets I’ve already walked on many, many times,” Ehrlich said. “And now they’re coming together for this purpose of restoration and resurrection and reanimation, and people have been tickled pink.”
Louisville Business First
