7-18-2024 5:08am

COCKEYSVILLE'S MARBLE

UMBC’s exploratory artist in residence Levester Williams examines history of Cockeysville marble in film project

Levester Williams, the 2023 – 2024 artist in residence in UMBC’s Exploratory Research Residency Program at the Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture. (Photo by Sizwe Ndlovu)

Since 2014, multimedia artist Levester Williams has developed a personal connection and exploration with a natural material that is a historic staple of Baltimore life—Cockeysville, Maryland, marble.

Go down specific streets in neighborhoods like Highlandtown, Charles Village, Cherry Hill, or Mount Vernon and you’ll see the ubiquitous, three-to-four tiered steps made of marble outfitting the exterior of many rowhomes throughout Baltimore, much of it from Cockeysville. Beyond the steps, you’ll also find the stone in landmarks such as Baltimore’s City Hall, the Washington monuments in Baltimore and D.C., and the 108 columns of the U.S. Capitol Building.

“The stone is a literal and figurative bedrock of our nation. It’s used in many prominent monuments and institutions,” explains Williams, who is a 2023 – 2024 artist in residence in UMBC’s Exploratory Research Residency Program, a component of the university’s Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture (CADVC).

In this pilot artist residency program, Williams is collaborating with the CADVC to complete a new video art project called “dreaming of a beyond: Baltimore,” in which the artist is researching the history of Cockeysville marble, underscoring the “intertwined history of African Americans’ plight to self-determined agency and full citizenship, and a rather benign stone.”

More than just marble

In his work, Williams examines the relationship between objects, humans, and the physical world with art that includes sculptures, installations, sound, animations, drawings, and videos. Williams is continuing that exploration in “dreaming of a beyond: Baltimore,” part of his ongoing series focused on the dolomitic stone that is quarried in Cockeysville, 25 miles from Catonsville. The series explores Williams’ desire to examine his idea of “the beyond—where race is no longer tethered to value; where my body matters just as much as other bodies matter,” he says.

The artist began his exploration into the stone after reading a passage in Lindon Barrett’s book Blackness and Value: Seeing Double about jazz singer Billie Holiday’s time growing up in Baltimore. The book references Holiday’s autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, which documents her stint cleaning the marble steps in Baltimore as a teenager. FINISH READING HERE