Wayland Gregory

While I knew that there were plenty of artists in the mediums of sculpture, mural painting, and architecture that were employed by Franklin Roosevelt's Works Progress Administration, public works projects I didn't know that there were any potters. Wayland Gregory happened to be a potter who did do work for the WPA. Gregory's work seems to me to have an appeal that breaks from the norm among WPA artists. While much WPA art is stylistically in the vein of social realism, and art Deco, Gregory seems to maintain a note of these styles while creating a style all his own. Gregory's figures are dark, macabre, perhaps even ghoulish, yet colorful, all the while maintaining an air of dignity and realism found in more conventional WPA art.
 Fountain of the Atoms: New York World's Fair, 1940


                                                    


Light Dispelling Darkness Fountain, 1937, Edison NJ: Represents the triumph of modern science and medicine over disease and superstition.