God-inspired stone carvings

William Edmondson, the son of former slaves and a janitor in Nashville, Tenn., became the first black artist to have a solo exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1937.

Edmondson was known for his stone carvings. Photographs of his work have been set to poems by award-winning poet Elizabeth Spires in a new book, "I Heard God Talking to Me". A book review in the Chicago Tribune highlighted the time that God spoke to Edmondson:

Beginning in his 13th year, as Edmondson relates it, God spoke to him. Sometimes the visions were of Bible stories, like the Flood, but, later in his life, they were instructions for a life's work: 'I was out in the driveway with some old pieces of stone when I heard a voice. ... First He told me to make tombstones. Then He told me to cut the figures. He gave me them two things.'

Edmondson's subjects included religious and secular figures, animals and more.