Personal Critical Archive of the Visual and Related Arts
Ethel Forister Behr
American; 20th-century
Bloomington, IL: McLean County Museum of History
64%
Untitled. c1965. Cast plaster and sand
The artist was a Central IL normie who apparently made this panel (and a few more like it) to decorate her porch. The indefiniteness of each molded emblem — irregular perimeters, inconsistent depths — vivifies the simplicity of their shapes and arrangement, as does the plaster's complex surface. Significant charm is introduced through the rhythm of linear versus curvilinear forms, exaggerated by the horizontal centerline's division of the composition into hemispheres. This turns the two sets of three dots that recur at bottom (between those sine-wave swoops) into a sort of resolution of the pictorial theme put forward by the upper portion: closed forms ambushing open ones till getting rebuffed below and, eventually, achieving equilibrium. (2024)