Barely a handful of Warren residents today remember Waylande Gregory, the designer and sculptor who lived and worked at his studio and home on Mountain Trail from 1939 until his death in 1971, creating ceramic sculptures of astonishing vitality and genius. His home and studio are long gone, and his fame is much diminished, but in his heyday he was called - in the words of a New York art critic writing in 1941 - "a genius in his field." In 1983, when a major exhibit of his work was mounted at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, New York, Gregory was praised as "the most outstanding ceramist of the [1925-1950] period." A year later the New York Times' art critic, viewing an exhibition of Gregory's work, called him "a neglected virtuoso in ceramics…." Born in Baxter Springs, Kansas, in 1905, Waylande deSantis Gregory first become acquainted with ceramic art through the pottery of Cherokee Indians who lived near his boyhood home. Stories his mother read to him from Greek mythology fed his imagination; their allegorical nature and emphasis on idealized human types were to have significant influence on his future work. From sixth grade through high school he attended State Manual Training Normal School in Pittsburgh, Kansas, where he took many art classes in addition to his regular studies. A precocious talent, Gregory completed two substantial sculptures while still a high school student: a bust of the institution's president (which he completed in only six sittings) and a classic Spirit of Athletics, a monumental work for which several classmates served as models. Upon graduation, Gregory moved to Kansas City to continue his education at the Art Institute, but once there he immediately began to receive commissions for the design and construction of architectural ornament and decorative sculpture. These included the interior design of a new administration building at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, a statue of Pan for a Kansas City park, and ornamental plastering for Wichita's Masonic Temple. The extreme productivity and facility of the teenaged artist attracted the attention of the then well known sculptor Larado Taft, who invited Gregory to work in residence at his Chicago studios. For two years Gregory studied intermittently with Taft, his horizons broadened daily by his knowledgeable teacher and by contact with other professional artists. He later took a job with the Midland Terra Cotta Company in nearby Cicero. In August 1925, "Kid" Gregory, as his fellow artists then called him, received his most important commission to date: the design and execution of several decorative interiors for the newly- built 12-story Hotel President in Kansas City. For the project Gregory adopted several historical styles, using Renaissance motifs in one room, something called "modern English" in the main dining room, and Colonial designs in other public areas. His most ambitious and widely publicized effort was the Aztec Room, in which hotel guests could imagine themselves dining within the precincts of an ancient temple. The 20-year-old Gregory researched his subject carefully, returning to Chicago to study reports of recent excavations in Guatemala and Mexico. Adapting his designs from photographs taken at these sites, he placed plaster of Paris replicas of Aztec carvings and hieroglyphic texts throughout the room. Columns representing monuments erected by the Aztecs were distributed along the walls, and at one end he constructed a primitive altar, over which he set a copy of the famous Aztec calendar stone unearthed in Mexico City. Gregory worked for six months, often 13 hours a day, preparing the models. "Several times attempts were made to obtain assistants…," reported a Kansas City newspaper on Jan. 3, 1926, "but in no case was the applicant adjudged qualified and the youth stuck it out alone." (Closed since 1980, the President Hotel is now scheduled for a multi-million dollar renovation, with special attention to Gregory's unusual ornamentation.) Gregory's skill and versatility in architectural ornament was demonstrated once again in 1927, when he won a competition to decorate a cloister-like chamber at the Chicago Theological Seminary. Gregory's Chicago commission followed hard on the heels of his second major project, the interior decoration of The Missouri, St. Joseph's largest theater. Still only 20, Gregory decorated the auditorium in the style of ages-old Persian, Assyrian and Hittite sculpture. "The screen on the stage will be of Oriental tracery and underneath, on both sides, will be carved figures of the sacred winged bull, bearing the head of glorified dignitaries of royalty," wrote the local paper in 1927. "Above the stage will be a border of Phallic gods fertilizing the tree of life…. A frieze on the side walls will represent sacrificial goats kneeling before the tree of mystery, and the border of the uppermost cornice will represent archers in combat. All the carvings will be richly colored in ceramic reds and blues, and in sunbaked yellows." The Missouri still stands, thoroughly renovated as a performing arts center and named a national historic site in 1979. Following the completion of this project Gregory took an extended trip to Europe with Taft in 1928, spending much time in Florence but also visiting many of the continent's major museums and ceramic centers. Later that year Gregory returned home to take a job at the Cowan Pottery Studios in Rocky River, Ohio, quickly becoming Cowan's most prolific designer. The artist married Hungarian-born Yolande von Wagner in April 1930. In January 1932 Gregory became an artist in residence at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. There he was able to set up his own studio and work with greater freedom than before. No longer bound to designs that could be adapted to a mold, he now composed to suit his fancy. At Cranbrook (where he worked and taught until June 1933) he designed and used for the first time a kiln heated by electricity; the new technology enabled him to control the heat of the instrument with great accuracy, allowing him to produce glazes and porcelains not previously possible. "The ceramic sculptures he created at Cranbrook helped the artist attain national prominence," wrote a Cranbrook historian. Throughout the Thirties Gregory exhibited the works he had created there, winning prizes at numerous national exhibitions. In 1937 three of his works were included in an important exhibition of American ceramics that toured Scandinavia. Leaving Cranbrook, he came east for the first time, accepting a teaching position at New York City's Cooper Union. Gregory made his home in Metuchen, attracted to the area by the fine clays found in the nearby Amboys. The actor Henry Fonda, who grew up in Nebraska, visited Gregory's New York City studio in January 1938, buying several pieces and posing for two busts. At his Manhattan studio-penthouse, Gregory created portrait busts of such notable personalities as Dolores Del Rio, Peggy Wood, Joan Bennet, Albert Einstein and Ruth St. Denis. Gregory's interest in heroic sculptural programs and allegorical representations of moral themes received its first major outlet in a fountain he built in 1936 in Edison's Roosevelt Park, a few miles from his home. Inspired by the site's proximity to Menlo Park, where Thomas Edison first experimented with electric light, Gregory chose for his theme "Light Dispelling Darkness." The fountain consists of a terra-cotta globe perched atop a 15' tall cast concrete central shaft modeled with relief figures, surrounded by six terra cotta horsemen mounted on flying buttresses, all set within a 40' circular pool. The horsemen represented The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse -- conquest, war, famine, and death -- to which Gregory added two more --greed and materialism. To construct it, Gregory was able to employ ten artists under the auspices of the W.P.A. arts program, to which he had that year been named New Jersey's Director of Sculpture and Ceramics. "Light Dispelling Darkness" was followed by a more ambitious work Gregory was to begin in 1937, a fountain for the grounds of the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair. The artist applied for the commission, confidently (and truthfully) observing that he was the "only sculptor in America who has successfully executed monumental scale sculptures directly in highly vitreous ceramic for permanent exterior use." Entitled The Fountain of the Atom, it was intended as a monument to the atomic age. Four huge statutes representing Fire, Earth, Air and Water were surrounded by eight fanciful nude terra-cotta children, or electrons, as Gregory called them. His "elemental little savages of boundless energy" were featured in a March 1939 Life Magazine photo spread. (Removed to Gregory's Warren studio after the fair closed, the 12 pieces of The Fountain of the Atom - called the largest single work of ceramic sculpture ever created - were reassembled for a 1983 exhibit at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse. One of the four monumental pieces, Water, was presented to the Everson as a gift by Gregory's estate after the exhibit closed.) Gregory spent more than a year creating the sculptures at his Warren studio. A second commission for the World's Fair was a sculptural group designed for the General Motors Corporation honoring American farm and factory workers. By the time Gregory began work on the fountains he had moved from his Metuchen farm to a house of his own design in Warren, at 16 Mountain Trail. Built in 1938-1939, to display his works of art, Mountain Top Studio also had an attached studio space with a kiln large enough to fire the enormous figures he envisioned for future work. Constructed of concrete block in a simple, vaguely Bauhaus style, his house and studio was something of a showplace in the 1940's, the site of several exhibits that attracted leaders of the art world. It contained several large rooms decorated with murals and multicolored floor tiles, as well as a terrace with reflecting pool which provided a spectacular view of central New Jersey. White peacocks ambled over the grounds, which were heavily populated with examples of Gregory's large sculptures, displayed in such a way that, according to one observer, "garden party guests and sculpted figures mingled strangely at dusk." Following up his success at the World's Fair, Gregory undertook another monumental work, a ceramic mural for the Municipal Center in Washington, D.C. It was one of two tableaux commissioned to illustrate the services provided by the city government. Entitled "Democracy in Action," Gregory's work, considered to be the largest ceramic sculpture in the world when completed in 1941, depicts the work of the police, fire and motor vehicle departments. Extending for 81' along the wall of an inner courtyard, his mural consists of a variety of scenes with over 50 low-relief figures. "At center, nine firemen attend to a house in flames, one screwing a hose to a hydrant while another rushes away from the building with a baby in his arms," writes Ross Anderson. "At either side, policemen examine an overturned car, help distressed children, direct traffic. Even though the subject matter is basically benign, with the police/firemen portrayed in the heroic courteous mode normally assigned them in civic monuments, Gregory included more disturbing elements, perhaps inadvertently. Set inconspicuously into the rear of the frieze at upper left is a cluster of demonstrating citizens carrying placards. They push toward unseen opponents while a policeman stands ominously in the foreground, nightstick held firmly behind his back. More obviously, several of his colleagues actively subdue two luckless thugs at right. The confrontation was interpreted more ambiguously than Gregory intended; while the artist wished to convey the idea of policemen maintaining the peace and offering protection from wrongdoers, at the time others (including the police force itself) saw it as a representation of police brutality, and a minor controversy ensued when the piece was unveiled." The work is composed of over 500 separate glazed tiles. In retrospect, Gregory's career seems to have peaked in the early 1940s. After the war, with the rise in abstract expressionism (a trend he did not appreciate), the market for his larger works evaporated, and he by necessity turned to other, less dramatic forms of artistic expression. Continues Anderson: "Even though Gregory had over twenty more years of career ahead of him, the Washington frieze was his last completed monumental work. In spite of his desire to work on a large scale, the market for his huge sculptures was always small. While occasionally a governmental body or corporation might commission a piece, he sold almost nothing of monumental size to private individuals; instead he peopled his own home and grounds with the sculptures he made, where they were ever present reminders of his talent and technical innovations, but also of his lack of commercial success. Even the sale of smaller pieces was highly erratic. A one-man exhibition of his work might be widely heralded and reviewed favorably in the press, but no purchases would result. Also, always confident of his abilities, Gregory did not hesitate to charge hefty sums for his art; at the Ceramic Nationals his pieces were often priced at double or triple the sums his colleagues were asking for comparably sized works." "As early as 1935 Gregory realized that he could not support himself and his wife on his modest earnings, so he began to produce groups of small porcelain figurines, plates, candlesticks, and other decorative ware in limited editions, selling them in exclusive stores such as Sloan's, George Jensen and Gump's. After the war, it was this activity that absorbed most of his professional time, Among the most attractive work of this type was a table setting with a polo player motif, which was inspired by the games he saw at Schley Field near Peapack, New Jersey. He made free use of a variety of subjects, from African themes, with zebras, giraffes, warriors, and jungle motifs, to near-Eastern themes, with harem girls dancing gaily on dishes and lamp bases, to sun bathers, horses, sailors and aquatic creatures, which range in expression from the playful Art Deco of early editions to the sometimes ghostly protopunk configurations of the 1950's. Gregory was particularly proud of a technique he developed and patented in which raw mineral crystals were embedded in his ceramic creations, usually in a bowl or ashtray, which would when fired melt into a liquid, glassy surface, resembling according to one catalogue "pools of enchanted tears." "To help make ends meet during these later years, Gregory engaged in several other projects. In 1956 he guested on the children's television program, "Ding Dong School," where he told stories and illustrated them as, he went along. The appearance was so successful that he become a regular on the show, where he would often create sculpture out of bits of discarded material such as wire mesh, aluminum foil, and sponges, transforming the humble objects into roosters, fish, and bareback riders. In the early 1960's he began writing a weekly column called "Arts in Living" for the Plainfield Courier News. Many of the articles were devoted to a rehashing of his former achievements, but in others he covered other artists and cultural events in the area. For additional income, Gregory also taught art classes at his studio; in the early 60's about seventy-five students were enrolled in weekly sessions. Among them was a woman who was to instigate unwittingly a dreadful episode in Gregory's career. Her name was Barbara Farmer, who together with her daughter and sister-in-law enrolled in a sculpture class in February of 1962. The wife of a wealthy businessman of Hungarian descent, Mrs. Farmer approached Gregory with a proposal that he become director of an art center that she and her husband would finance and build in the Berkshire Mountains in western Massachusetts. It was intended as a visual arts counterpart to the Tanglewood Festival and the Jacob's Pillow dance facility, both of which were located in the same area. Gregory immediately expressed interest in the idea, and at a meeting with Mrs. Farmer and her husband at their home in Highland Park, New Jersey, the three discussed the arrangements further. Gregory would be offered a lifetime contract as director of the center, it was agreed, and would receive a salary of $10,000 a year, plus commissions for artworks that would supply him with up to $100,000 a year income. He would also have the lifetime use of living quarters and a private studio that would be maintained without expense to him." In May Gregory went to Massachusetts, viewed the property and accepted the proposal. "Leaving his wife behind in Warren, Gregory moved to Massachusetts in June 1962, At Mr. Farmer's request he hired workmen and bought the necessary materials to begin work refinishing some of the existing buildings on the site. The Farmers visited the center almost every weekend to oversee the progress. For a short while all went well, but in the course of these visits Gregory become aware that the Farmers were by no means in agreement regarding the center, that their financial affairs were in disarray, and that the marriage was not stable. Gregory often witnessed sometimes-violent arguments between Farmer and his wife. By the following spring, Farmer withdrew his support from the project, forcing his wife to spend money out of her personal account. Later that summer he began to speak openly to others in Massachusetts regarding his wife, accusing her of being mentally unsound and indulging in unacceptable personal behavior. Mrs. Farmer began to talk of divorce. The project in the meantime came to a complete halt. An already untenable situation changed dramatically when Mrs. Farmer was shot and killed on September 18, 1963. Charged with the murder, Mr. Farmer was tried and acquitted on grounds of mental incompetence. The series of trials and extensive press coverage which followed the incident (the New York Times, Newark Evening News and Plainfield Courier News followed the trials in detail) proved devastating to Gregory, who was accused of having sexual relations with Mrs. Farmer, practicing witchcraft with her, as well as a host of other indiscretions. He himself suffered financially in the debacle, never receiving payment for much of the work he had done, not to mention having his personal reputation sullied. Fortunately he was able to return to his studio in New Jersey, and more or less pick up where he left off 18 months earlier. But to suffer such a disaster, instead of the glorious crowning of his career that he anticipated, was deeply disappointing to Gregory, and he never recovered fully from it. In later years Gregory for the most part gave up working in clay, considering it too strenuous for him physically. Instead he worked extensively in metal, hammering out images from flat, malleable sheets of lead and copper." One of Gregory's last major works was 10 terra cotta pieces illustrating the Ten Commandments, commissioned by Dr. Hyman Tobey of No. Plainfield for display in his home. Execution of the 24" high sculptures took eight months. Gregory died of bleeding ulcers at age 66 on August 18, 1971, survived by his wife, Yolande, and an estimated 5,000 pieces of art crammed into every nook and cranny of his Mountain Top studio-home. The couple had no children. A year after his death came the announcement that the Waylande Gregory Memorial Foundation had been established, headed by Warren mayor Samuel Christie. Its goal was to raise $200,000 to purchase Gregory's home, studio and artwork. "We envision a cultural center, with limited art classes, and open to the public," Christie explained. Foundation trustees included former mayor John Bracaglia, Assemblywoman Millicent Fenwick, Mrs. Gregory and a number of leading figures of the New Jersey art world. For reasons unknown, the project foundered. Embittered, reclusive and penurious, Yolande Gregory lived on for another nine years after her husband's death, surrounded by her memories, scrapbooks filled with photos and yellowing press clippings, and art works she refused to exhibit or sell despite her financial straits. In the late 1970s Mrs. Gregory filed charges against her former housekeepers, alleging they had stolen $200 million worth of artwork from her home. Both the County Grand Jury and township municipal court dismissed the charges for lack of evidence. Yolande Gregory died in September 1980, leaving her meager estate and her husband's art works to charity: Two friends from the neighborhood, Marguerite Hale and Bianca Brown, were named co-executors, charged with the duty of cataloguing and selling the art works, a task unfinished even today. All proceeds from the Gregory estate fund the nonprofit Door of Hope, which aids abused women and children. Filmmaker Walter Blakely of New Brunswick, who made a television film about the life of Waylande Gregory in 1983, visited Mountain Top studio after Yolande died: "The house, which was filled with Gregory's work, was a shambles," he wrote. "Mrs. Gregory was destitute when she died. She lived in one room, while sympathetic neighbors provided her with food and township mayor Samuel Christie paid her taxes." There have been a limited number of postmortem exhibits of Gregory's work. In 1981 the Watchung Arts Center hosted an exhibit of smaller pieces, loaned by the Waylande Gregory Memorial Foundation. "Although Gregory was once recognized as the foremost ceramic sculptor in this country, his reputation has lapsed into obscurity since his passing in 1971," wrote the Watchung Arts Council. "The inaccessibility of the artist's private collection at his studio-home in Warren over these past 10 years has greatly contributed to the decline in the public's interest…." Through the efforts of Marguerite Hale and Bianca Brown, Syracuse's Everson Museum of Art mounted a major exhibition of Gregory's works in 1984, featuring 50 works, including the 12 sculptures that had comprised The Fountain of the Atom. The exhibit came to New Jersey in the spring of that year, hosted by the State Museum in Trenton. "Waylande Gregory…pushed [clay sculpture] to its fullest potential," wrote curator Barbara Perry in The Diversions of Keramos, 1925-1950. "He created some of the largest clay figures of the modern era, inventing new methods and techniques as the size of his works demanded. His oeuvre is diverse, both stylistically and technically, and he is undoubtedly the most outstanding ceramist of the period." REFERENCES: Brochure, Performing Arts Assoc. of St. Joseph, Inc.; Design in America, The Cranbrook Vision, 1925-1950, no author; The Diversions of Keramos, American Clay Sculpture 1925-1950, published by the Everson Museum of Art, Syracuse, NY, 1983 (the instant article is loosely based upon an included biography of Gregory by Ross Anderson; unattributed quotations are from Anderson's estimable biography); Lolita Flockhart, Art and Artists in New Jersey, 1938; James M. Goode, The Outdoor Sculptures of Washington DC, 1974; Exhibition Catalogue, New Deal Art: New Jersey, Rutgers Univ., 1980; Life Magazine, 3/13/1939; "No Greater Ecstasy," Kansas Quarterly, Vol. 14, #4, Fall 1982; Syracuse Post Standard, 9/9/1983; Kansas City Star, 1/3/1926; The Home News, 2/26/1983; Echoes-Sentinel, 12/21/1972, 6/8/1978, 5/3/1984, 11/12/1981; New Brunswick Sunday Times, 11/21/1937, 3/5/1939; New York Times, 4/1/1984; Star Ledger, 8/25/1983; Courier News, 10/18/1965, 8/20/1971; . PHOTO CAPTION: Located in a grassy bowl a few paces east of Middlesex County's veterans' memorial, the fountain was allowed to deteriorate. Many of the smaller ceramic works were badly vandalized. Presently it is undergoing restoration by the Middlesex County Cultural Arts Commission, although a July 2004 visit reveals that the restoration is at a standstill, with the globe and sculptures removed and stored under plastic wrapping nearby, and the entire site surrounded by a chain link fence. © Warren Township Historical Society |