Then there is “Working Mother,” a relief apparently modeled in clay that involves a face cracked down the middle, the head and hand of a screaming infant and another adult hand holding paper money. Though it is the work of a contemporary, Betty A. Gerich, the woman’s Pallas Athene looks plus the competence of the modeling make the piece seem like a detail found in the studio of some late 19th century sculptor.
 

Gerich's works range from mythical to whimsical. Her connected columns twine like Mobius strips on steroids and glisten under metallic coats of paint. The one striking exception to this geometry is a small piece puckishly titled “Prehistoric Venus- Middle Age Crisis”,  fertility goddess, complete with featureless face, pendulous breasts, and outsized, jutting buttocks. The work is both a celebration of female fecundity and a wry comment on the ravages of aging on the body.

Kate Betteridge

The Log

Gerich's work criticizes American culture's overbearing obsession with beauty, and the often pain ridden process that many endure to achieve perfection. Betty Gerich has chased the elusive figure down; she has caught beauty in her artwork.

Conspiracy, 6" x 9" x 3"
Ceramic Relief Sculpture

Patricia Rosoff
The Hartford Advocate

Gerich’s sculptures are directly body-referential, for the scale of her forms fit the viewer’s body hand-in glove. The riffled curves in Sanctuary, for instance, echo the back of the hand and the hollow of the palm in a thousand interpenetrating positions.
Like a three-dimentional cubist drawing or rippling abdominal muscles, these works are composed of fractured planes reassembled in a kind of fluid, cellular animation. ...Gerich’s (sculpture) is a solid presence in this show.

 Gerich's works gain power as they progress chronologically. The “Reclining Figure Relief” calls to mind pieces of shell pressed close together on a beach. the head of this recumbent female is to the right, with a snake-like arm enclosing her head. The black coloring and claustrophobic composition create an eerie quality that becomes more overt five years later in the mask series.
Gerich’s next phase of work includes mostly white torsos in a variety of positions. In the back of the gallery are two torsos (one male, one female) which stretch and dance together almost lyrically. One thigh strides forward with the body stretched back against it in counter-tension. The tension is reminiscent of some figures by Michelangelo, but Gerich’s version is more stylized and not as tortured. 

 Gerich concentrates on great romantic themes in her works. Whether she is celebrating love through her equestrian forms or her exquisite female torsos, she has discovered the ultimate possibilities of intimate and appealing themes.
The flowing, lithe female forms she shows are equally as successful.