Elza Mayhew (1916–2004) was born in Victoria, BC. She received a BA from UBC (1936) and MFA (1963) from the University of Oregon. Mayhew was known for her abstract sculptures that were typically carved in polystyrene and then cast in aluminum or sometimes bronze. She worked primarily from sketches, rarely from models, and described her work as highly structured and architectural while always relating to the human form. Mayhew produced commissioned works for international events such as Expo 67, Expo 86 and an international trade fair in Tokyo, as well as for public institutions such as the Bank of Canada, the University of Victoria, the Canadian National Capital Commission and the Royal British Columbia Museum. Her work is included in the collections of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, the National Gallery of Canada, Simon Fraser University and the University of Victoria. Her sculpture Column of the Sea is located at the Confederation Centre of the Arts in Charlottetown. Mayhew was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy, and was an active member of the Limners Society.

Robert Murray, sculptor, painter, printmaker and art teacher, was born in Vancouver in 1936 and grew up in Saskatoon. He began studying art in Saskatoon, taking courses at the Bedford Road Collegiate High School under Ernest Lindner (1897-1988) and at the Saskatoon Teachers’ College under Wynona Mulcaster (b. 1915). In 1960, after attending the Regina College School of Art (1956-1958) and the Emma Lake Artists’ Workshop led by Barnett Newman in 1959, Murray moved to New York City, where he studied at the Art Students’ League under Will Barnet (1911-2012). As an artist, Murray had started out as a painter and a printmaker but shifted his focus to sculpture beginning in 1959, when he accepted a commission to design a sculptural fountain for Saskatoon City Hall. The commission was Murray’s first attempt at designing large-scale sculptural works in metal fabricating plants. He continued in this vein in subsequent years, designing numerous monumental constructions in steel and aluminum, including the red painted steel sculpture entitled Ferus, which he produced at the Treitel-Gratz factory in New York in 1963. The work was installed on Lookout Island in Georgian Bay, ON and was shown at the Washington Square Gallery, New York in 1964 and at the Betty Parsons Gallery, New York, the following year. It was purchased in 1999 by the National Gallery of Canada, which held a Robert Murray retrospective entitled The Factory as Studio during that year. Along with the National Gallery of Canada, Murray’s work can be found in the collections of the Belkin, the Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto), the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, the New Brunswick Museum (Saint John) and the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York).