Artist

Waylande Gregory

born Baxter Springs, KS 1905-died Elizabeth, NJ 1971
Media - gregory_waylande.jpg - 90012
Photograph taken by Mark Nadir. Image is courtesy of the Federal Art Project, Photographic Division collection, 1935-1942 in the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Also known as
  • Waylande DeSantis Gregory
Born
Baxter Springs, Kansas, United States
Died
Elizabeth, New Jersey, United States
Active in
  • Warren, New Jersey, United States
  • Metuchen, New Jersey, United States
Biography

Waylande Gregory was raised in a small town in Kansas where, as a child, he made mud sculptures and glazed them with syrup. In 1933 he settled on a farm in New Jersey, where he operated the world’s largest kiln, executing important commissions for the 1939 New York World’s Fair and the Municipal Center in Washington, D.C. Gregory’s career declined in the 1950s, a casualty of the artist’s personal problems and the rise of abstract expressionism, which made Gregory’s figural work seem old-fashioned.