NEW DATE: Meet the Artists: Esteban Cabeza de Baca and Heidi Howard, in conversation with Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas

Born in 1985, Esteban Cabeza de Baca’s family and childhood hometown of San Ysidro, CA, virtually straddled the United States-Mexico border. Their ancestry is Indigenous Chicano. A painter, sculptor and educator, Cabeza de Baca’s work explores the history of landscape painting by deconstructing a monumental perspective of nature and proposing— with their outdoor plein-air painting practice and sculpture— that life as subject matter is interconnected and constantly fluctuating. From outdoor sculpture to painting in rural ecosystems, Cabeza de Baca seeks to undermine personal authorship to be a medium through which nature has a voice and centers ecological world views to imaging new potentials. Their work has recently been exhibited at venues that include Crystal Bridges Museum, AK; Kunstfort, Vijfhuizen, Netherlands and Garth Greenan Gallery, New York, NY. Cabeza de Baca earned a BFA from The Cooper Union and an MFA from Columbia University. Currently based in Queens, NY, they are represented by Garth Greenan Gallery, New York.

Learn more about the artist at http://www.estebancabezadebaca.com/

Heidi Howard is a gender non-conforming artist whose work focuses on the connections between our bodies and their environments. Howard’s practice stems from observational portraits and expands into immersive spaces. In the face of climate emergency and institutional lethargy, Howard questions borders, genres, gender, nationality and authorship by collaborating with their biological and chosen family and mixing their home experience with institutional engagements. Through these points of interaction, they grow new spaces and ideas. Howard has exhibited nationally and internationally, at venues that include Gaa Gallery in Provincetown, MA and Cologne, Germany; Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, Winston-Salem, NC; W139, Amsterdam, Netherlands; Hunterdon Art Museum, Clinton, NJ; and at Simone Subal Gallery; The Queens Museum, Nancy Margolis Gallery and James Cohan Gallery, all in New York, NY. They have participated in artist residencies at Yonkers Artist Residency Program, NY; Atlantic Center for the Arts, New Smyrna Beach, FL; Terra Summer Residency Giverny, France; Rauschenberg Residency, Captiva Island, FL; Carrizozo AIR, NM; Palazzo Monti, Brescia Italy; and at Byrdcliffe, Woodstock, NY. Howard was born in and urrently lives and works in Queens, NY.

Learn more about the artist at https://www.heidihoward.net/

Kaitlin Garcia-Maestas is Curator and Director of Exhibitions at Socrates Sculpture Park, Long Island City, NY. Her work centers on artist-driven projects and initiatives and takes an invigorated approach to exhibition programming and the support and presentation of contemporary artists. Her research and curatorial interests have been devoted primarily to exploring themes of decolonial resistance, displacement and cultural heritage in the United States and the Americas. Prior to Socrates Sculpture Park, she held curatorial positions at the Momentary in Bentonville, AR; the Biennial of the Americas, Denver, CO; Denver Art Museum; and Museum of Contemporary Art Denver. In 2015, she co-created the Biennial Ambassadors artist residency program, a collaboration between the Biennial of the Americas and SOMA Mexico City. Garcia-Maestas’ curated exhibitions include Diana Al-Hadid: Ash in the Trade Winds, In Some Form or Fashion, Esteban Cabeza de Baca: Let Earth Breathe, A Divided Landscape, Yvette Mayorga: What a Time to Be, and Mary Mattingly: Ebb of a Spring Tide.