Weaver Parrish had studied at the Art Students League in New York City under William Merritt Chase, exhibited at the Paris Exposition in 1900 and worked with stained glass at the Tiffany Studios.
In 1932, she was admitted to Cooper Union where the education was free but admission competitive, and studied sculpture for three and a half years under Charles Rudy.
Another was Alexander Archipenko, a sculptor who had been part of an artists' group in Paris called Section d'Or, which included Pablo Picasso, Juan Gris, Georges Braque and others.
A show at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in 1929 featured works by Picasso, Matisse and Braque among many other European artists who were exploring new techniques of cubism and abstraction.
She showed Negro Head at MOMA in 1930; she was included in a book Art in America in Modern Times, published in 1934, as one of 20 women "doing very good work";[7] and she exhibited at a group show at the Jacques Seligmann Galleries in 1934, the Clay Club Galleries in 1939, the National Sculpture Society in 1940, and the Whitney Museum in 1941.
However, other commissions were not forthcoming, and despite her successes, Norton realized she needed to find alternate means of financial support, and turned to teaching.
She applied and was accepted for a position teaching sculpture at the Norton Gallery and School of Art in West Palm Beach, Florida, starting in early 1943.
Several more sculptures were created in the late 1940s, portraying everyday subject matter such as people cutting hair, children pumping water, kneeling figures and others.
In addition, the director of the Norton Gallery, Robert Hunter, bought two pieces -- Beauty Parlor in 1946 and Machine II in 1947.
As Ann Weaver settled into her teaching role, she and Ralph Norton corresponded periodically about art and developed a friendly relationship.
In the years following his death, Ann Norton began practicing a new form of sculpture—the field of monumental sculpture, influenced by her travels to the west, where she was captivated by the color palette and powerful rock formations which to Ann resembled thousands of figures eroded in the rock[9] Upon her return, she began work on a grouping of seven figures as a memorial to her husband, the tallest of which was to be twelve feet high, carved in pink Norwegian granite.
They were made of red, handmade North Carolina brick, twenty feet high, created for her garden, well placed to appear suddenly, behind dense foliage.
In 1969, Ann's works was finally shown at the Norton Gallery of Art, featuring her brass and bronze torsos.
She wished to create a foundation - a "garden museum" - a mix of sculpture with trees, bushes, water and wildflowers, as well as space for exhibitions and symposiums.
The concept was further enriched by Sir Peter Smithers, a distinguished British politician and garden designer, who Ann had met.
He developed an overall plan that incorporated a number of rare palms, creating a dense landscape that would provide the "hide and reveal" concept that Norton envisioned.
Over 100 of these works are displayed at the Ann Norton Sculpture Gardens on the grounds of her former home in West Palm Beach.