Beloved children’s book author and illustrator Lois Ehlert made an indelible impression on many of those with whom she crossed paths.
Amy Kirschke, senior director of learning and engagement at the Milwaukee Art Museum, still vividly recalls the first time she encountered Ehlert when Kirschke arrived at the museum more than two decades ago. “I first met her on my second week on the job in July 2003. We had an exhibition at the time in our education gallery. It was a retrospective of her children’s book art and really showcased her creative process,” Kirschke said.
“That’s what Lois’ legacy is so much about, not just what she produced but her process and her love of inspiring kids to be artists themselves,” she says. “That exhibition featured her preliminary drawings, her mockups – or dummies as she called them – as well as her folk-art collection, from which she found inspiration, and things from nature and from around her home.”
Ehlert, who died of natural causes at the age of 86 on May 25, 2021, in Milwaukee, where she spent most of her life, maintained a lasting connection with the Milwaukee Art Museum.
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“Much of the world knows Lois as a beloved children’s book author and illustrator,” Kirschke said. “We also know her as a dear friend and a creative partner with the museum. She was also our neighbor, with her apartment and studio just a few short blocks away. She was a regular at the museum, and we had decades of collaboration with her, especially working with children.”
The passing of Ehlert, who’s also renowned for her signature collage artwork created with bold colors and crisply cut shapes, came in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic and delayed any type of public remembrance.
Now, more than two years after her death, Milwaukee Art Museum is holding a celebration of Ehlert’s life and work through a variety of events and activities throughout November.
“It’s the party, the commemoration and the celebration that we’ve been waiting for. We’re very excited to be gathering and celebrating her,” Kirschke said. “We’re excited to fill the month with all sorts of activities. All of our youth and family programming will center on Lois. Every Saturday in November we will have storybook readings in the galleries. Each week we will feature a different book by Lois. There will be a play date with art for our youngest visitors. We will have art making in Windhover Hall and we will have a growing mural inspired by Lois’ book Eating the Alphabet.”
Go to the Milwaukee Art Museum’s events calendar to find all Lois Ehlert-related programs in November.
The celebration will honor Ehlert’s legacy, which is enduring and goes well beyond her generosity through her art and teaching. Annual royalties from Ehlert’s book sales are being donated to the museum to establish an endowment fund for learning and engagement efforts.
“This will really allow us to continue doing our work and expand our resources and continue to engage with people around arts-rich lives,” Kirschke said.
BORN IN THE DODGE COUNTY community of Beaver Dam on Nov. 9, 1934, Ehlert showed an affinity for artwork as a young child. She received a scholarship to the Layton School of Art in Milwaukee, where she earned a degree in graphic design.
Ehlert began her career as a freelance illustrator and graphic designer. Her early work included illustrating books by other authors, such as the 1961 book I Like Orange by Patricia Zens. Her debut as an author-illustrator came with Growing Vegetable Soup in 1987, followed by Planting a Rainbow the following year.
In 1989, Ehlert illustrated Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin Jr. and John Archambault, a tale that follows the journey of rowdy uppercase and lowercase letters of the alphabet as they journey to the top, and bottom, of a coconut tree. The book has sold more than 20 million copies, making it one of the all-time best-selling children’s books. That same year, Ehlert published Color Zoo, a showcase of paper-engineered animal faces.
Kirschke shared an especially fond memory she has of Ehlert’s connection with the Milwaukee Art Museum that occurred during the annual Art in Bloom floral celebration.
“We were just all enchanted by her. She was very much like a storybook character,” Kirschke said. “When Lois came in, we were all kids again. She would prepare new collage materials and would help us set up. One of her favorite things was when kids walked in, they would gasp when they saw all the art supplies laid out ready for them. There was this idea that she was prepping for magic to happen through art-making.”
Kirschke also recalled a time when Ehlert wore a bird bracelet that she had made to an event at the museum.
“She created all of her own paper jewelry for the event,” Kirschke recalled. “She’s smiling a sly smile because she had just finished taking a photograph with a young child, and she had positioned her arm, unbeknownst to the child, so that the bird on her bracelet was sitting just so on the child’s shoulder. After the picture was taken, she said that she couldn’t wait for the child to go home and see the picture with the bird on her shoulder.”
Ehlert had an affinity for children that never faded, Kirschke said. “Lois was so present, and she would sit with the kids and even though she was being mobbed for hugs and autographs, she looked at and talked to each child as though they were the only child in the world,” Kirschke said.
As part of the commemoration, several of Ehlert’s books will be carried in the museum’s store, including Red and Green, her final book that was posthumously published in September.
“When she passed, we received so many notes from teachers, parents and grandparents stating how much these books had meant in children’s lives,” Kirschke said. “It’s a chance for all of us to revisit all the gifts she gave us and will continue to give us through the legacy gift.”
Dick Ehlert fondly recalled his sister’s skills as an artist as well as her dedication to their family. “She was kind of the leader of our family,” he said. “She got involved with everybody. We looked up to her for that.”
She was also proud of her Wisconsin roots, he said. “Lois really treasured coming from a small town. She also loved Milwaukee and enjoyed working with the people in New York and San Francisco, but she took pride in coming from a small town.”
Lois developed an affinity for Milwaukee after moving there following high school and made it her home for the remainder of her life. “She was tempted to move to New York, where some of her work was, but she loved Milwaukee,” Dick Ehlert said.
His wife, Pat, recounted the joy Lois had in preparing a big meal for her extended family. “She usually hosted Easter even though she had a tiny apartment. She would squeeze us all in there,” she said. “She was a great cook, although sometimes she’d only have a glass of milk and a cookie for lunch and Lean Cuisine for supper. But she’d really cook up a storm when she was entertaining. And she’d always have things for the children to do. I remember one time she told them she’d give them a nickel for every heart-shaped thing they found in her apartment because she loved hearts and collected a lot of folk art that had hearts as a motif. One of our daughters found a potted plant that had heart-shaped leaves.”
“She made a fortune on that,” Dick Ehlert exclaimed.
Lois developed a deep connection with children despite not having any of her own, Pat Ehlert said. “She didn’t talk down to children or patronize them,” she said.
Dick Ehlert described Lois as a “kid at heart” while also recalling her penchant for hard work. “Lois spent a lot of time with her art,” he said. “I recall early mornings or at night when she’d be at her drawing board working. Sometimes she’d revise her books 30 times or more before they were ready for press.”
Pat Ehlert offered a similar assessment. “She wasn’t afraid to do it over if she wasn’t satisfied with it,” she said. “She was somewhat of a perfectionist.”
Dick Ehlert said he believes his sister would be pleased with the Milwaukee Art Museum’s remembrance of her life and career but insisted that she was never one to have sought the limelight. “I think she’d be excited, but we did try to get her to do some things that would get her some notoriety, but she didn’t want any part of that,” he said.
ALLYN JOHNSTON, publisher at Beach Lane Books, began working with Ehlert in 1986. Together, they created nearly 30 books. “What stood out to me the most was the way she saw the world and her joy in color and her joy in the natural world and her joy in conveying the wonder of those things to young children,” Johnston said. “That, to me, was Lois’ central passion.”
That passion remained even late in Ehlert’s life, she said. “Even when she was in her most fragile, elderly state, she had this exuberant joy at the smallest details that involved color or the natural world,” Johnston said. “She really wanted to encourage children to make things of their own, too.”
Ehlert would often mention the inspirational importance of an old family card table where she worked on her art projects as a child. “She did such an amazing job of just conveying the thrill of how fantastic it was to have a place or have a spot, like that card table that her parents left up for her, so that she could make things whenever the spirit moved her,” said Johnston, who will give a presentation at the museum on Nov. 9, which is Ehlert’s birthday, highlighting the more than 30 years in which they worked together.
Ehlert enjoyed a special connection with children throughout her career, Johnston recalled. “You know how some adults cannot really deal with being around kids and they get so formal and odd,” Johnston said. “It was really like the children were Lois’ people. She could connect with little ones. She had that impish sense of humor, and I think that was part of her great connection with little kids.”
Johnston is convinced that Ehlert, although beloved and highly regarded by her legions of fans and supporters, often didn’t get enough credit for her work. “I often feel that she didn’t get her due for the genius of her work,” Johnston said. “Her work looked simple and that was its brilliance. It didn’t seem like it was as complicated to do as it really was.”
When Johnston speaks at the Milwaukee Art Museum, she plans to highlight the rigorous process that Ehlert followed in her work.
“Like her book Waiting for Wings, the butterfly one, there’d be an endless round of dummies that she would make and natural history drawings that she would do before she actually did her collage watercolor,” Johnston said. “She used to say to me that people think if you are a collage artist you don’t know how to draw. In her case, that was absolutely not true. She was also trained as a designer. Every book of hers, she would focus on the smallest detail.”
Ehlert’s sense for art even carried over into the way she dressed, at times, Johnston said. “She once said to me that dressing is just like collage – putting things together. She wasn’t snooty the way people often get about fashion. She just wanted to have things be surprising for people to see. She loved to create a surprise to shake it up, giving people a reason to smile, whether it was with her work or the way she dressed.”
Ehlert did this with an enduring sense of modesty, she said. “Lois had no patience for grandiosity. She was so down to earth. She was so not pretentious,” Johnston said. “That’s why she was one of the biggest joys to work with.”
A member of the Wisconsin Writers Wall of Fame, Ehlert also designed the floor and the light fixtures at the Betty Brinn Children’s Room at Milwaukee’s Central Library.
“She’s joked that Michelangelo did a ceiling, and she did a floor,” Kirschke said. “There were so many dimensions to Lois. She was such a great teacher to all of us. She was a Milwaukee treasure, for sure.”
Johnston agreed. “I feel like she treasured the beauty and the details of the world as she saw them and she wanted to make sure that others celebrated them, too,” she said. “Lois wanted to share the fun of that.”
