Angela Gregory
Gregory said she made her first piece of sculpture when she was twelve years old, crafting a birdbath out of chicken wire, concrete, and a wastebasket.
As a child, Gregory was inspired by the story her mother told her about watching stonecutters carve an angel on the exterior of the Newcomb Chapel.
[4] She was awarded a one-year scholarship to the Paris branch of the Parsons School of Fine and Applied Arts to study illustrative advertising.
Her real purpose in going to Paris, however, was to study stonecutting with the noted French sculptor, Antoine Bourdelle.
[1] In Bourdelle’s studios, she sculpted a limestone copy of the fifteenth-century Beauvais Head of Christ under his tutelage.
'"[6] Gregory sculpted a portrait bust of Campbell in the studio and as she worked the clay, the Master would occasionally step in to provide a critique and a philosophical discourse on the nature of art.
Meeting Krishna again and attending one of his lectures at the Theosophical Society with Gregory was an important turning point in Campbell’s life.
But after a while I realized that if you don’t have it inside you, it doesn’t matter if you are here or in Paris.”[1] She set up her own studio at the rear of her parents’ home on Pine Street.
Her first major commission was at the young age of 25 and was for the architectural sculpture on the façade of the New Orleans Criminal District Courts Building.
[7] In 1931, Gregory worked on a team of sculptors who executed historical panels for the façade of a new state capitol building in Baton Rouge built during the administrations of Governor Huey Long.
As part of that work, she created a monumental bust of John McDonogh[4] which was installed in the municipal Duncan Plaza of New Orleans (1950s).
The strength of this key decision she molds with her own personality, carrying it beyond the obvious influence of Bourdelle.”[citation needed] Lamantia continues: “Her collaborations with architects can only be hinted at in a gallery display, yet are necessary to recognize in any assessment of her work since they represent an involvement inculcate in the broader objectives of the grand tradition.”[citation needed] Gregory’s work has been exhibited at the Salon des Tuileries, at the National Gallery in Washington and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
[11][9] One side of the debate is that the sculpture may need more context for it to hold any significance, since Allen was a former Confederate military leader, the owner of the Allendale Plantation, and he owned enslaved African Americans.
[12] On the other side of the debate, some think Henry Watkins Allen shaped Louisiana history positively and he should have more representation, even beyond the one monument by Gregory.
