A native of Nashville, Tennessee, William
Edmondson was the son of former slaves. He supported himself as a laborer and
hospital worker, and around the late 1920s he began to carve limestone grave
markers for his local congregation, stating: “I am just doing the Lord’s work.”
Edmonson soon broadened his production to include freestanding figures, including
animals, angels, and sacred tableaux. Alfred Barr featured a selection of these
sculptures at the Museum of Modern Art in 1937, the museum’s first solo
exhibition dedicated to an African American. However, seen only as a naive
artist and outsider, Edmondson did not achieve widespread recognition until
several decades after his death.

The eagle is a particularly powerful image,
and can be read as both America’s national symbol and as an icon of St. John
the Evangelist.