Betty A. Gerich

Since childhood, Betty Gerich has enjoyed the challenge of making art. When she studied drawing in Nice, France, in a summer program after her freshman year at college, she discovered she wanted to be an artist. Later, while studying for a BFA degree at the University of Connecticut, Betty took a course in ceramics and fell in love with clay as an art material. The clay seemed to take on any form, transforming itself almost by magic in her hands. Since that time, clay has been Betty’s favorite medium for art making. At the University of Hartford she continued her study of art completing a Masters in Art Education. Her thesis project for the MAEd was a solo exhibition at Garrett Gallery at American International College and for the first time Betty felt like an artist. After that, she attended Wesleyan University where her creative ideas and skill continued to evolve in a program for a Certificate of Advanced Study with a concentration in the arts.

Teaching art has been an important part of Betty’s life from her first experience with elementary school classes and later teaching art in high school. Interaction with students has inspired her own studio work. Simple projects, assigned to students, have suggested more complex ideas to explore in her studio. At present Betty teaches Art History part-time at Asnuntuck Community College while her main concentration is art making.

Figures and faces have provided a vehicle for expression for Betty Gerich. Faces in the work, reveal thoughts and intentions, moods and feelings. Body language, in postures and gestures has been used to expand the expressive possibilities of her sculptures incorporating the figure. When the body has been combined with other objects in the work, the message has become more complex and ambiguous so that the piece has layers of meaning. Over time, Betty has created a visual autobiography in which each piece of sculpture has become a snapshot of an experience from her life.

Betty Gerich has served as president of Artworks Gallery, an artist’s cooperative in Hartford, Connecticut. As a member of Artworks Gallery, Connecticut Women Artists, National Association of Women Artists and the New England Sculptors Association she has had many exhibition opportunities. Her work has earned her recognition including a number of regional awards, two national awards, and a Connecticut Commission on the Arts Individual Artist Grant. Images and commentary about Betty’s artwork have been published in three books, a three-dimensional design textbook, a book about figurative sculpture and another book featuring nationally selected sculptors. Betty Gerich has had eight solo exhibitions including a one person show at the New Britain Museum of American Art. She lives in Northern Connecticut.