Ram

William Edmondson was a stonemason’s assistant in Tennessee when he felt a calling from God. He recalled, I was out in the driveway with some old pieces of stone when I heard a voice telling me to pick up my tools. . . . I looked up in the sky and right there in the noon daylight . . . God was telling me to cut figures.

The artist began carving sculpture about 1933; four years later he was the first Black artist to have a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Ram shows how Edmondson carved stone with sensitivity and empathy. He suggested the texture of wool in working the body and gave the animal personality through its attentive upturned head.