Ethel Spears

• Name — Ethel Spears • Born — 15 October 1903 • Birthplace — Chicago, Illinois • Died — 2 August 1974 • Place of death — Navasota, Texas • Education — School of the Art Institute of Chicago • Field — painter • Illustration — "Merry Go Round", a WPA mural by Spears in 1939 - in Rochelle, Illinois Library

Ethel Spears was born in Chicago, Illinois, on October 5, 1903, and grew up in the Beverly area. After high school, she entered the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), where she studied textiles and earned a certificate after completing a three-year program. Having already lost interest in textiles, she immediately re-enrolled in SAIC to study fine arts. Spears chose to study under the most avant-garde member of the faculty, muralist John W. Norton. With his mentorship, she won the opportunity to paint two murals in the SAIC tearoom. Around 1925, Spears graduated from SAIC and decided to move to Woodstock, New York to study with the sculptor Alexander Archipenko. Nine months later she moved to New York City, where she stayed for some five years. She took classes at the Art Students League and New York University and supported herself with odd jobs. Around 1929–30, she spent time in Paris, France, afterwards moving back to Chicago. Enrolling once more at SAIC, she earned her master's degree.

The Flagg-Rochelle Public Library contains a mural, Merry Go Round by Ethel Spears, painted and installed in 1938. Murals were produced from 1934 to 1943 in the United States through the Section of Painting and Sculpture, later called the Section of Fine Arts, of the Treasury Department. The WPA was the largest and most ambitious American New Deal agency, employing individuals to carry out public works projects. In 2019 several of Spears' WPA murals were removed from Chicago area middle schools because of concern that the subjects depicted are primarily white and do not match the diversity of the student body today. By the late 1950s, Spears was suffering from an illness that may have been lead poisoning from her work with enamelling. With her life partner and fellow SAIC teacher Kathleen Blackshear, she retired to Blackshear's home town of Navasota, Texas. Spears died August 2, 1974, in Navasota. Her papers and those of Blackshear are held by the Smithsonian Institution's Archives of American Art in Washington, D.C.