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Lightfromwater
  • Art

Light from Water: Heidi Howard & Esteban Cabeza de Baca, with Liz Phillips

When
All Day
Where
Glyndor Gallery
Light from Water 12
Esteban Cabeza de Baca, "Hosts", 2023; Heidi Howard, "Anjuli Rathod", 2022; "Living room installation", 2023; "Light from Water Mirror", 2023; "Night Pond", 2023; Esteban Cabeza de Baca, "Middle Gallery Installation (Embrace of the Serpent)", 2023; "Fireplace mantel installation", 2023; "Ojo de Abiquiu", 2022, installation view in "Light from Water", 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery. Image courtesy of Wave Hill. Photo: Stefan Hagen.
Light from Water 15
Esteban Cabeza de Baca, "8 Fold Way", 2023; "Pueblo bonita", 2023, installation view in "Light from Water", 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery. Image courtesy of Wave Hill. Photo: Stefan Hagen.
Light from Water 21
Esteban Cabeza de Baca, "8 Fold Way", 2023; Heidi Howard, "Alex Chowaniec", 2022; "LaKela Brown", 2023; "Pink Head", 2023; "Bronze Mama"; "Snake Head", 2023, "Living room installation", 2023, installation view in "Light from Water", 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery. Image courtesy of Wave Hill. Photo: Stefan Hagen.
Light from Water 24
Heidi Howard, "Living room installation", 2023; "Pond", 2023; "Martha Joseph", 2022; "Ashkenazi Doll", 2023; "Blue Ivy", 2023; "Wave Hill Pond", 2023; "Untitled figure", 2023; "Untitled vase", 2023; "Anjuli Rathod", 2022; "Night Pond", 2023, installation view in "Light from Water", 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery. Image courtesy of Wave Hill. Photo: Stefan Hagen.
Light from Water 34
Esteban Cabeza de Baca and Heidi Howard, "Braiding Sweetgrass", 2023, installation view in "Light from Water", 2023. Courtesy of the artists and Garth Greenan Gallery. Image courtesy of Wave Hill. Photo: Stefan Hagen.
Light from Water 38
Esteban Cabeza de Baca, "Stardust", 2023; Heidi Howard, "Vines", 2023, installation view in "Light from Water", 2023. Courtesy of the artists and Garth Greenan Gallery. Image courtesy of Wave Hill. Photo: Stefan Hagen.
Light from Water 40
Esteban Cabeza de Baca, "Sunflowers", 2023; Esteban Cabeza de Baca and Heidi Howard "Fireplace installation" and "Iris and Spider", 2023; (ground) Liz Phillips "'Wave Hill Waves' Wavetable", 2023; Heidi Howard, "Light from Water Sunflower", 2023; Esteban Cabeza de Baca, "Rock Alcove Water Garden", 2023; Heidi Howard, "Wave Hill", 2023, installation view in "Light from Water", 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery. Image courtesy of Wave Hill. Photo: Stefan Hagen.
Light from Water 43
Esteban Cabeza de Baca and Heidi Howard, "Fireplace installation", 2023 and Liz Phillips "'Wave Hill Waves' Wavetable", 2023, installation view in "Light from Water", 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery. Image courtesy of Wave Hill. Photo: Stefan Hagen.
Light from Water Host
Esteban Cabeza de Baca in collaboration with Heidi Howard, "Host", 2022, installation view in "Light from Water", 2023. Courtesy of the artist and Garth Greenan Gallery. Image courtesy of Charles Benton.

Light from Water presents new works by Heidi Howard and Esteban Cabeza de Baca that share a deep-seated connection with the natural world. Featured in the exhibition are collaborative works by both artists, as well as Cabeza de Baca’s layered landscape paintings, Howard’s portraits that incorporate plant life and natural settings and a Wavetable sculpture by sound-art pioneer Liz Phillips. Inspired by the views and vegetation of the Aquatic Garden, several works on display were created at Wave Hill this summer. The spirit of collaboration is integral to the work of the artists in Light from Water, acknowledging the greater communities within which they feel a sense of belonging. Howard’s portraits are informed by dialogue with family members and loved ones, and their installations and self-portraits show a holistic embrace of our environmental surroundings. Cabeza de Baca’s scenic paintings and sculptures portray the land itself as kin or ancestor, influenced by Indigenous views and cultural ways of knowing.

Of Indigenous Chicano ancestry, Cabeza de Baca was raised in California near the Mexico border, while Howard, the child of two artists (Phillips is Howard’s mother), was born and raised in New York City. Currently, Howard and Cabeza de Baca live and work together in Long Island City, Queens. Their individual art practices retain distinct approaches and styles; however, they have spent most of their time painting together since meeting in 2012 as graduate students in Columbia University’s MFA program. In the last two to three years, they have also been making collaborative work together as they have gradually influenced each other’s creative practices. Howard has incorporated plein air, or outdoor observational painting, in their work, and Cabeza de Baca has introduced more figurative elements into his landscape views and sculptural work. As the exhibition title suggests, Light from Water contemplates reflection and refraction, seeing in and through, while casting back. This exhibition asks us to reimagine our relationship to nature—to see ourselves as part of, rather than separate from, the living and non-living elements in the world’s collective ecosystem.

Light From Water is organized by Gabriel de Guzman, Director of Arts and Chief Curator, with Rachel Raphaela Gugelberger, Curator of Visual Arts.

Read the Brooklyn Rail's review of the exhibition and learn why critic Elizabeth Buhe considers that "Stepping into Light from Water at Wave Hill in the Bronx is a little bit like time travel, or space travel, or both."

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