Customer Reviews

I Heard God Talking to Me: William Edmondson and His Stone Carvings

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Would have been 5 stars but I would have liked less poetry and more about the artist. Edmondson is an amazing artist who deserves his due. I cannot believe his house was razed and he has no headstone. Tragic.

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"One night God talked so loud he woke me up.... pick up my tools and start to work..." So starts the legendary vision and transformation of William Edmondson. Son of slaves who had religious visions inspiring him to carve stone sculptures. From sewer worker / janitor to having a solo show at the MOMA.

Not some fancy over 'trained' over produced arteeest. Not sculpture in huon, koa, nor marble.. . . .. Rather stingily economical crude limestone sculptures. Not finished to the nth degree but stylized unrefined and absolutely true to themselves. With fundamental hardness & hardiness that many a sculptor struggle to achieve.

Per strict definition this is not an 'art book'. But in its homage to this artist it presents dozens of his 'original' works.

William Edmondson listened to voices no one heard and saw things only visible in his mind's eye. God was watching over him and relaying, in visions and in voice, what his life's work would be. Edmondson, who was the son of freed slaves, was illiterate, but he was no stranger to hard work. He was practically a slave himself with the owner of the land he was born on, but by the time he was sixteen he felt he needed to move on to Nashville. He worked an assortment of jobs, but due to an injury he ended up working as a janitor at a woman's hospital. The voices and the vision never quite left William and soon he would act on them.

He was in his driveway when the voice came again and he claimed he "knowed it was God telling [him] what to do." At first he was directed to make tombstones, but later he was almost "divinely inspired" and his work began to flourish. People began to notice, to find joy in his artwork. In 1937 Dahl-Wolfe introduced his work to a people William would never know, but who would come to know him through his art. His exhibit at MoMa would make him "the first black artist to have a solo show at that prestigious institution." William was a simple man with a grand vision and even his friends and neighbors never realized just how special he was. In this book Elizabeth Spires makes the man and his work come alive in her poetry.

This is a phenomenal work that meshes the visual and sculptural world of William Edmondson with the poetry of Elizabeth Spires. The black and white photographs of William and his work remind me of old museum catalogs and the effect is very appealing. Spires very nicely captures the personality of a man who will, because of books like these, never drift into obscurity, but be cherished for generations to come. In the back of the book is a mini biography of William, a selected bibiography and photo credits. This is a stunning book about a man you really should get to know!

William Edmondson, the child of freed slaves, spent most his life working hard in a variety of low-paid jobs, including field hand and janitor, before Divine intervention changed the course of his life. When he was about 57 years old, religious visions directed him toward the vocation of stonecutting. He began carving and selling tombstones, and then moved on to garden ornaments, birdbaths, and stylized human figures. Completely self-taught and often needing to use small, irregular stone pieces that he could buy cheaply or scavenge, Edmondson slowly gained notice in the art world and wound up becoming the first African American artist to have a solo exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

In this stunning book, Elizabeth Spires has created a series of moving poems that give voice to the images of Edmondson and the figurines in the accompanying photographs. Yet this book is no ordinary art book, with the poems, photographs, and detailed author's note all communicating a powerful set of economics ideas related to Edmondson's life and his work.