Institute of the Arts and Sciences: Levester Williams – Our Bedrock

January 31 – April 20, 2025 • Tues – Sun • 12 – 5 • FREE
100 Panetta Ave • Santa Cruz • Wheelchair accessible 

First West Coast Solo Exhibit 

Our Bedrock includes sculpture, installation, performance and video, as well as photographs by legendary jazz bassist and photographer Milt Hinton, the exhibition traces the foundational nature of Black struggles in the United States.

The exhibition centers on the histories that emerge through William’s research into Cockeysville Marble, mined in Baltimore County, Maryland. In William’s work, this history is poetically woven together with the history of struggles for Black Liberation through reference to Billie Holiday. In the musician’s autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues, Holiday references her job cleaning these marble stoops of white families in Baltimore. In William’s practice, the creative assembly of reworked marble, Hinton’s photographs, Holiday’s autobiography, Blues music, and Black performance reveals Black Struggle– and Black creativity– to be the bedrock of the nation.