Her earliest subjects for pictures involved her capturing the life of the Lower East Side as well as journeying to slums in other cities such as Boston.

Her greatest fame came some years later, after her marriage to New York artist Jerome Myers, when she became known for her figurative bronze statuettes and figurines "with a quite uncommon sense of humor, and with more than this, a feeling for form and movement that gives them life and conviction.

"[1][2] "Her three powerfully expressed sculptured figurines impress this reviewer with the fact that she is worthy of a place alongside of Daumier, Meunier and Mahonri Young.

[4] After the death of Michael Klinck, Alfiata moved between Brooklyn and Orange, N.J. which helped provide Ethel with a strong early education in both public and private schools.

She also became personally acquainted with the painters George Luks, John Sloan, William Glackens, Arthur B. Davies, Ernest Lawson and Elmer Livingston MacRae.

[6] The content of this article from The International Revue on Ethel (Klinck) Myers reveals how strongly she responded to the inspiration and goals that Robert Henri, as teacher, had set forth for his students.

His drawings and paintings of the lower East Side had been getting favorable reviews and he was widely respected by critics and artists alike, particularly Robert Henri, for the honesty and humanity of his realistic view of the immigrant populations crowded into that ghetto.

A year after their marriage on October 21, 1906, Ethel gave birth to a daughter, Virginia Myers, after an extremely difficult labor.

"[5] Ethel soon made a career decision to move away from doing pictures of the Lower East Side and instead turned to an innovative approach in creating small, realistic sculptures.

After the birth of her daughter, Ethel chose to give up painting in order to free up much-needed studio space for her artist husband.

"[11]The Craftsman: “In the past Mrs. Myers has been better known to the artist world as a painter of courage and skill, for the future she must rank, whether she will or no, as a sculptor with the power of presenting through her work a knowledge of life and understanding of human psychology as rare as it is interesting.” [13] The New York Times: "Mrs. Jerome Myers has an exhibition of sculptures at the Folsom Galleries that proves her a serious humorist, a Forain of Fifth Avenue.

"[14] The Brooklyn Eagle: "Ethel Myers in her three powerfully expressed sculptured figurines impress this reviewer with the fact that she is worthy of a place alongside of Daumier, Meunier and Mahonri Young.

[15] The Outlook Magazine quoting Theodore Roosevelt at the 1913 Armory Show: "To name the pictures one would like to possess and the bronzes and tanagras and plasters would mean to make a catalogue of indefinite length.

"[16] Just a few months before he visited the Armory Show, Roosevelt gave his annual address as President of the American Historical Association and included this observation, which may have prompted his reaction to Ethel Myers work on display at the Armory, "The inscriptions of Hellenistic Greece in the third century before our era do not, all told, give us so lifelike a view of the ordinary life of the ordinary men and women who dwelt in the great Hellenistic cities of the time, as does the fifteenth idyll of Theocritus.

This was a time when the impact of Isadora Duncan's dancing had totally captured the imagination of the artistic community of New York, as well as much of the rest of the world, and Ethel took note of Virginia's gift for spontaneous and instinctive movements.

She organized a series of recitals throughout New York City, booking theatres, handling contracts, and coordinating costumes, set design, musicians, publicity, and the printing of tickets and programs.

[5]" Over the years, Ethel and Jerome organized seventeen recitals in theaters in New York City with many articles written about Virginia's dancing genius.

In spite of Ethel's personal success at the 1913 Armory show, and the enormous publicity surrounding all that took place, the event itself did not end up shining a spotlight on the work of American art and artists as Jerome Myers had originally hoped.

As Ethel said, "After the Armory show we were dead broke so I gave a studio exhibition of Jerome’s work, offered everything for half price because we were going to Europe."

The reason was that she and Jerome, as well as many others in the New York art community knew that the impact of the Armory Show was going to have a very negative effect on the fate of many American artists when they tried to place their work with dealers.

Roger Fry, the English artist and writer and curator of paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, had bought a number of Jerome's drawings for his private collection.

After arriving in London to leave with their dealer some of the art they brought with them, the Myers family traveled directly to Paris, paid six months rent for a small apartment in the Left Bank, bought furniture for it, and moved in ready to start, hopefully, an exciting new chapter in their life.

So with two taxi cabs packed with steamer trunks, unfinished paintings, wet laundry and almost no money, the Myers family set off on what was to be a frightening and exhausting journey to struggle their way back to America.

[20] Jerome, Ethel and their 8-year-old daughter, Virginia, were all in a state of exhaustion and near starvation due to the lack of food and the overcrowded wartime conditions they faced traveling all day and night on the deck of the ship taking them back to America.

Their joy at the sight of the Statue of Liberty in New York harbor must have been not unlike the emotions felt by many earlier arriving immigrants, who later would become the subjects of so many of Jerome's Lower East Side pictures.

It was about at this point, with things so difficult, that Ethel decided she really needed to help support her family by bringing in additional sources of new income.

[21] Ethel Myers believed strongly in the importance of her husband's artistic career, and never hesitated in putting her own artwork to the side to pursue entrepreneurial activities that would help her family weather economic difficulty.