The Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture presents the early-career survey Levester Williams: all matters aside, an exhibition curated by Lisa D. Freiman, professor of art history at Virginia Commonwealth University

The exhibition will be accompanied by the first in CADVC's public art projection series with a new video art gallery set into the open amphitheater of the UMBC Fine Arts Building. There is more information on the projection series at https://umbc.edu/stories/exploratory-artist-levester-williams-marble/.

The Opening Reception will include a public program featuring Levester Williams, Michelle Diane Wright, and Lisa Freiman.

The exhibition will open for regular hours on Friday, September 20, and will continue through December 14.

Visitor Information

Admission is free.

Parking for the Opening Reception is free, available in nearby Lot 8. Please visit here for directions and additional information.

Header: Detail of video still of Nia Hampton in the vignette “Nia’s Embrace” from “dreaming of a beyond: Baltimore,” filmed at Mount Vernon Park Place in November 2023. Photo by Levester Williams. (Coming from behind, a hand with dark brown skin tone reaches around to the front of a marble column in a park-like setting. In the background a black and white marble border runs between a parallel strip of grass and a reflecting pool.) Body: A drone image of the Texas Quarry in Cockeysville, Maryland, one of the locations where Cockeysville marble is mined. Photo courtesy of Levester Williams. (Birdseye view of a circular bright teal body of water at the center of a marble quarry.) 

In conjunction with the exhibition Oletha DeVane: Spectrum of Light and Spirit, the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture presents a closing panel discussion, featuring the artist, the exhibition curator, and additional scholars:

Jessica Bell Brown, Curator and Department Head for Contemporary Art, Baltimore Museum of Art

Oletha DeVane, Artist, Oletha DeVane: Spectrum of Light and Spirit

Christopher Kozjar, Artist, Andrew Harris Post-Doctoral Fellow, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Vermont

Leslie King Hammond, Graduate Dean Emerita, Founder of Center for Race and Culture at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and former Senior Research Fellow, Robert Deutsch Foundation

Lowery Stokes Sims, Exhibition Curator, independent art historian and curator

More information:

https://umbc.edu/event/oletha-devane-spectrum-of-light-and-spirit-closing-panel-discussion/

Admission to the panel discussion and the exhibition is free.

UMBC is committed to creating an accessible and inclusive environment for all students, staff, and visitors. If you need accessibility-related accommodations for a planned visit or special event, two weeks' notice is appreciated. Contact: abbotts@umbc.edu or 410-455-3188.

Free parking for this event is available in nearby Lot 8.

Photo by Marlayna Demond '11 for UMBC.

Image: A large white pedestal supports three colorful sculptures in the foreground of a large art gallery. A video projection onto the back wall glows beyond a collection of vivid paintings hung on the white gallery walls. An empty wooden bench rests in the center of the blond hard wood flooring.

In conjunction with the exhibition Oletha DeVane: Spectrum of Light and Spirit, the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture presents a closing panel discussion, featuring the artist, the exhibition curator, and additional scholars:

Jessica Bell Brown, Curator and Department Head for Contemporary Art, Baltimore Museum of Art

Oletha DeVane, Artist, Oletha DeVane: Spectrum of Light and Spirit

Christopher Kozjar, Artist, Andrew Harris Post-Doctoral Fellow, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Vermont

Leslie King Hammond, Graduate Dean Emerita, Founder of Center for Race and Culture at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and former Senior Research Fellow, Robert Deutsch Foundation

Lowery Stokes Sims, Exhibition Curator, independent art historian and curator

Admission to the panel discussion and the exhibition is free.

UMBC is committed to creating an accessible and inclusive environment for all students, staff, and visitors. If you need accessibility-related accommodations for a planned visit or special event, two weeks' notice is appreciated. Contact: abbotts@umbc.edu or 410-455-3188.

Free parking for this event is available in nearby Lot 8.

Photo by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Image: A large white pedestal supports three colorful sculptures in the foreground of a large art gallery. A video projection onto the back wall glows beyond a collection of vivid paintings hung on the white gallery walls. An empty wooden bench rests in the center of the blond hard wood flooring.

The five research centers in the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences at UMBC present this panel discussion to kick off the 2022-23 CAHSS Colloquium series, designed to facilitate interdisciplinary conversations among faculty, staff, and students to build intellectual community within and beyond individual research interests and curricula offerings. The topic for 2022-23 is resilience. Resilience is the ability of an entity, a person, an institution, a technology, a community, a natural environment, to anticipate, respond to, and recover from adverse conditions. The concept of resilience generally has a positive connotation, but it has also been criticized for placing on individuals and communities the burden to adapt to adverse and potentially unjust contexts. Adapting to adverse conditions may not necessarily improve them, so what is the relationship between resilience, resistance and social change? This panel will explore resilience from a variety of different perspectives. An open gallery and reception will follow the discussion.

This event is co-hosted by the Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture (CADVC), the Center for Innovation, Research, and Creativity in the Arts (CIRCA), the Center for Social Science Scholarship (CS3), the Dresher Center for the Humanities, and the Imaging Research Center (IRC) and is sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences.

Ann Brodsky - facilitator
Anne Brodsky is Professor and Chair of Psychology. Her work focuses on resilience, psychological sense of community, immigration and displacement, and the role of communities in creating and resisting societal risks and oppressions, including violence, war, poverty, sexism, and racism.

Panelists:

Earl Brooks
Earl H. Brooks is an Assistant Professor of English, and his research interests include music, African-American rhetorical traditions, and composition. His forthcoming book, Resonance of Resistance, explores the rhetoric of Black music through the work of Scott Joplin, Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, Mary Lou Williams, and Mahalia Jackson.
 
Marcela Mellinger
Marcela Sarmiento Mellinger is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Work where she teaches policy courses as well as an intimate partner violence elective. Her research interests include advocacy, intimate partner violence, and social work education.
 
Oletha DeVane
Oletha DeVane is an accomplished multidisciplinary artist who explores diverse political, social identities and cultural interpretations. Her work has been in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the U.S. and in the United Arab Emirates and is in the collection of the Baltimore Museum of Art. Born in Baltimore, DeVane received a B.F.A. from Maryland Institute College of Art and M.F.A. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Her solo exhibition Oletha Devane: Spectrum of Light and Spirit will be on view in the Center for Art, Design, and Visual Culture September 22 - December 17, 2022.

Dominic Nell
Dominic Nell is a photographer, activist, and farmer-chef focused on healing communities through various mediums. Nell is the founder of CityWeeds, a trauma-informed food business that strives to eliminate food deserts and improve the health, wellness, and independence of Baltimore City residents through the growing and selling of microgreens and cold-pressed juices. Nell's vision for CityWeeds is to feed and heal the community by growing food out of vacant lots.

Registration is required.

UMBC is committed to making its events accessible to everyone. Please send an email to abbotts@umbc.edu to request any specific accommodations. Two weeks' notice is appreciated, but we will do our best to accommodate needs at any point.

This event will be recorded and available on CADVC's YouTube channel and CS3's YouTube channel.

Cathy Cook has been creating films, videos, poetry films, animation, collages and installations since the early 1980’s. Cook’s latest project took her to the largest migration locations for Sandhill Cranes and Whooping Cranes to create the Cranes in Motion project. In 2012 and 2014 she received research grants from UMBC and the Imaging Research Center to develop and produce this multi-media collection of works. Cranes in Motion aims to promote public interest, awareness, and appreciation of crane culture through a multifaceted portrayal of the natural history of this species and to allow the viewer to understand their human relationship to these extraordinary birds and our shared ecosystems.

Cook has exhibited her award-winning work nationally and internationally in both solo and group shows including screenings at MOMA and the Whitney Museum. In addition, Cook is the recipient of multiple national grants and fellowships including the Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, New York State Council on the Arts, Jerome Foundation, and the Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artists Award.

All Lectures are free and open to the public and are held in the CADVC gallery space.