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“Mrs. Florsheim is consistent in her love for her material and in her accent on perfection. She uses the materials as her inspiration and creates freely within the limits they impose.”
– “Two Structurists’ Works on View,” Joseph Zucker, Chicago Tribune (March 27, 1966).
“Mrs. Florsheim is a modest person, willing to show her work but hesitant to describe the ‘why’ of it. She works almost exclusively in plastic now, after trying other materials from poster to copper wire. She never categorized her work until an ‘op’ painter told her that she was doing in form what he was doing on canvas. ‘So I guess it’s op sculpture,’ she says. She speaks of trying to create illusionary form, something that changes as the viewer moves around while looking at the the work. Mrs. Florsheim prefers plastic because, she says, ‘It is the most beautiful and the most 20th-Century of materials.’”
– “Mrs. Florsheim Opts to Sculpt,” Patricia Moore, Chicago Daily News (Tuesday March 8, 1966).
“… she captures light with her glowing plastic constructions in a way that becomes almost mystic. Using various geometric arrangements of light-conducting plastic rods and tubes, she has constructed sculptures which seem to be mathematical formulas brought from the unreal to the super-real….Plastic, which is so common in our life today, has been given the uncommon treatment by Mrs. Florsheim to create works of art like jewels worthy of any museum.”
– “Contemporary’s new show is a real ‘sharp’ one,” Don J. Anderson, Chicago Today (April 5, 1970, 16).
“Partial to circles and squares, the artist said, ‘You can only go so far with these basic shapes, but I don’t feel limited by the shapes. Geometric art is the kind of art I like.’ Her compositions are basically association-free. She said she is interested primarily in exploring the limits of material and in aesthetic arrangement of her favorite shapes….‘Working in plastic is a very precise operation,’ she pointed out. ‘Its very clean, very neat, very regular. For example, when you cut a piece of plastic with an electric saw you must exert the same pressure on both sides of the material to cut a straight line.’”
– “Hard plastic produces light illusions,” Susan Pettit, The Aspen Times (August 7, 1980, 25-B).
“Precisely constructed and formally complex, Florsheim’s sculptures gain excitement and animation when light plays on their glassy-smooth planes. Significantly, light is reflected in narrow white stripes from the edges of these transparent planes, with the result that they often give the appearance of hovering weightless in the air.”
– “Homework Assignments for Coming U.S. Show,” Carol Cutler
“Light affects these objects, but they are big and complex enough to be studied as formal arrangements quite independent of their luminosity implications…Despite the authority of the large pieces as the museum, the smaller ones may be more impressive; less so because they are a bit better crafted on the whole….since they draw attention to the subtlety of formal and light relationships which the artist has always handled with especial finesse.”
– “Chicago art’s other world,” Franz Schulze. (1970)
“I like to buy young artists’ works but not many of them are making objects now. I have no quarrel with the fashion for idea and action rather than substance. If a man wants to go out in the desert and dig a trench, that’s his privilege although I must say I do wonder about his not building in permanence when he takes a Life photographer along.’ Her voice is the trait that commands attention initially. Husky and rich it is somehow surprising coming from a delicate gray-haired woman with the aristocratic features of a Renaissance portrait ...‘I work because I love to do it,’ she says. ‘I love to have an idea that is exciting enough to drive me out of bed in the mornings to execute it. One of the most terrible things in our world today is forced retirement. How can anyone possibly set an age when a person is useless? It’s such a waste of brain power…I started with painting and then changed to sculpture because I have much for feeling for form than for color. I studied at the Institute of Design where they put new materials into our hands every week. We were told to try the various things and see what happened.’
Mrs. Florsheim can easily pinpoint the time when she became preoccupied with translucent acrylic plastic as a medium. ‘It was during the Army-McCarthy hearings when like so many others I was watching too much television and smoking too much. One day I picked up a cigaret lighter a friend had given me and I really looked at it. It was one of those plastic blocks with seashells imbedded in it. I became fascinated with the way light affects the material.’”
– “ The object of her art,” Jane Gregory, Chicago Sun-Times (June 23, 1970)
“A first impression of the show is that of startling beauty. Florsheim’s static, elegant objects radiate a life and motion which increases with the movement of the viewer. As one becomes seduced by the objects, their formal complexity slowly reveals itself. Florsheim’s 30-year love affair with plastic has resulted in a highly personal, individual expression in a medium which she has made her own.”
– Review of show at Fairweather-Hardin Gallery, Claire Wolf Kranz, New Art Examiner (March, 1983)