Left to right: David with his father Max in 1946; David as an early reader; and with his mother Jeannette in 1943. © David Ehrlich.

David experiments with multimedia performance while teaching at SUNY and living in New York City in 1971. © David Ehrlich.

Animation and Ehrlich
Ehrlich was born in Elizabeth, New Jersey in 1941. His pops, Max, was an eye surgeon and his mom, Jeannette, raised David and his younger brother, Jeff, and wrote poems in between. As a youth Ehrlich did the things boys were supposed to do (boxing, football) and not supposed to do (draw, paint, sing and tap-dance). He began pre-medical study at Cornell but soon realized that he was taking this road for his parents not for himself and switched to pre-law where he also breathed in courses in international relations and a boatload of Eastern languages and philosophy. His interest in all things Eastern led him, like many after him, to visit India where he apprenticed as a sculptor and studied a sitar like instrument called the veena. Perhaps afraid to get on with life, Ehrlich continued to study after he returned to the U.S.A. in 1964. By the 1970s, he became increasingly interested in the process of creativity and even taught courses on the subject at the State University of New York from 1971-75. All the while Ehrlich continued to paint, sculpt, compose and dance. Animation emerged out of a desire to integrate these different arts and around 1974, he began toying around with an 8mm camera. By 1975, he made his first animation film, the aptly titled, Metamorphosis. He was hooked.

In 1977, Ehrlich began sending his films [Vermont Étude (1977) and Robot (1977)] to ASIFA festivals (Annecy and Zagreb). Incredibly, given the amount of activities and initiatives Ehrlich undertook he was in essence a shy guy. Fortunately, animation has always been dominated by open, modest, faulty and caring human beings. Ehrlich was quickly welcomed into this new world and specifically the International Animators' Association, ASIFA.
 

	Robot (above) and Vermont Étude (left), both made in 1977, were Ehrlich's entrées into ASIFA. See a clip from Vermont Étude now. © David Ehrlich.