Edith Dallas Ernst

Ernst, Edith Dallas
Jan. 4, 1923 - June 2, 2011

Mrs. Edith Dallas Ernst, 88, of Nokomis died June 2, 2011.
A graveside service was held on June 5 and a memorial service is being planned for later this summer.
Survivors include her son, Eric Max Ernst of Sag Harbor, N.Y., Amy Louise Ernst of New York City, granddaughter, Jamisen Beechler-Ernst; and her sister, Ruth Schnierer of Boca Raton.
Often referred to by friends and family as a "force of nature", Edith Dallas Ernst of Nokomis challenged the notion that perpetual motion was a physical impossibility in her dedication to her family and career.
Maintaining the kind of pace that would age one prematurely, in her case this was never apparent. There was, for example, the occasion when she requested a senior citizens discount at a Paris museum at which point the teller asked her to provide evidence that she was in fact eligible. There can be no sentient being that will deny that the pictorial definition of happiness is watching a 72-year-old woman get carded.
Born in Riverdale, N.Y. in 1923, she was the widow of the American abstract painter Jimmy Ernst and the daughter-in-law of Surrealist giant Max Ernst and was an accomplished ceramicist in her own right. Originally a Theatre major at Columbia University, Dallas left formal academia behind when an opportunity arose to study instead with the Yale Repertory Theater.
Married in 1947, Mrs. Ernst became a pioneer in the days of early television where she worked as a film editor and later as a producer for shows such as "Blind Date" and the venerable "What's My Line," as well the groundbreaking "Westinghouse Studio One."
Moving to Connecticut, with her family, Dallas opened the Five Mile River Gallery, perhaps the only suburban exhibition space in America during the Eisenhower years to feature works by artists such as Tanguy, Matisse, Ernst, and Duchamp, before decamping for a time with the family to Sedona, Ariz. in 1961.
It was during this period that she first began her career in ceramics, studying with the pottery master Charles Loloma before returning to the East Coast where she began exhibiting at numerous spaces in Florida, Connecticut, and New York. It was also during this period that she developed her unique stylistic mix of Hopi glaze techniques matched to the gently flowing abstract shapes and undulations she used for the forms of her bowls and vessels.
Interestingly, even as an accomplished ceramist, Dallas continued to search to expand her aesthetic horizons, travelling to New Mexico to study with the famed pottery masters on the Acoma Reservation for over a month while living in the back of a Ford minivan. At the time, she was almost 70 years old.
The family requests that donations be made in Mrs. Ernst's name to either the East End Hospice or The Retreat in East Hampton, New York.