Working with often thin, odd-shaped pieces of limestone, Edmondson was able to convey character through the genius of his carving, as in "Schoolteacher.”
:William Edmondson (1874–1951), the illiterate son of freed slaves, was the first African American to become the subject of a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. That display, in 1937, brought to national attention the powerful, direct carving of this self-taught, visionary stonecutter and sculptor.
Edmondson did not begin carving objects until he was well into his 50s. Working exclusively in limestone, his intuitive approach to sculpture produced minimalist, compact works that convey a sense of monumentality and express a high degree of design.
Over the course of the remaining 17 years of his career, he advanced from creating tombstones to garden ornaments, animals and finally figures drawn from his neighborhood and the Bible. As preeminent African American art historian David C. Driskell has observed, "An affectionate warmth of feeling, almost humor, often characterizes his unpretentious and charming sculpture."
Edmondson used the tools at hand: a railroad spike and then a chisel, a short-handled hammer and a file. Stingy by necessity, Edmondson used small, irregular pieces of limestone he bought cheaply from a nearby quarry or scavenged from demolished buildings, streets and sidewalks. The dimensions of these multishaped stone pieces dictated the compact size of his works.
Although he was in a sense a folk Modernist, Edmondson proclaimed, "I am just doing the Lord's work. I ain't got much style; God don't want much style, but He gives wisdom and sends you along."
Since he was born and died in the Nashville area, it is fitting that the Cheekwood Art Museum has the largest collection of his work, and has organized "William Edmondson: The Hand and the Spirit," on view through January 3. Drawn from the museum's permanent collection, it comprises 11 representative works of the great self-taught sculptor.
Having worked on a farm in his youth, Edmondson was familiar with the stately posture, prominent horns and solidity of a "Ram,” circa 1930s. In spite of minimal details, one knows immediately what animal it is.
Edmondson was born just outside Nashville and raised on a former plantation where he worked as a hired hand before the family moved into the city. He never attended school or learned to read or write. His widowed mother's emphasis on respect, frugality and honest simplicity characterized his life and sculpture. Since boyhood, he said he experienced visions in which he heard God speaking to him, revelations that continued throughout his life.
In Nashville, Edmondson labored in the city sewer works, as a racetrack groom, on the railroad, for 25 years as a janitor and orderly at the Women's Hospital and, finally, as a stonemason's helper. In the latter job, he mixed mortar and helped cut and place stone, igniting his interest in stone carving.
He never married, living for years with his sister in a tiny story-and-a-half red brick cottage with a deep, 50-foot-wide lot, where he had a sizable garden.
When masonry slumped as the Depression deepened, Edmondson gathered in his yard limestone curbstones that a city project was replacing with cement. Around 1931, when he was 57, Edmondson said, "I was out in the driveway with some old pieces of stone when I heard a voice telling me to pick up my tools and start to work on a tombstone. I looked up in the sky and right there in the noon daylight He hung a tombstone out for me to make." Squaring up rough-cut curbstones with railroad spikes and chisels, he shaped them into tombstones that he sold for a few dollars to friends and neighbors in the black community.
