In their differing ways, Howard and Cabeza de Baca approach the concept of the self vs. the interpersonal, at times divorced from physical grounding while at others tied directly to place. As partners of over a decade with distinct practices that occasionally come together in collaborative works, there is a spiritual quality in each of their canvases, one that spins affectionately through subjects, even when tackling dark historical moments and the echoes of colonialism. 

David B. Smith Gallery is proud to present Night & Day Dreams, a collaborative exhibition by New York-based artists Heidi Howard and Esteban Cabeza de Baca. Featuring paintings made individually and collaboratively by the artist couple, poetic and deeply resonant messages on human connection to celestial bodies, landscape, and one another come to the forefront. In their differing ways, Howard and Cabeza de Baca approach the concept of the self vs. the interpersonal, at times divorced from physical grounding while at others tied directly to place. As partners of over a decade with distinct practices that occasionally come together in collaborative works, there is a spiritual quality in each of their canvases, one that spins affectionately through subjects, even when tackling dark historical moments and the echoes of colonialism.  Cabeza de Baca complicates our understanding of progress, technology, and community, by revealing the historical truths of Native enslavement and the wrought legacy of colonialism. Fleeting moments and pivotal eras are flattened and examined in Cabeza de Baca’s work, often to mystical ends. In Howard’s portrait work, the artist’s interpersonal connection in the here and how is underscored, illustrating the fellow artist through her cultivated space and personal effects, energetically deploying abstraction and pattern. Community, an invisible thread that shapes human action, is a benchmark of Howard’s work, as seen in their nearly 20 years of painting portraiture. Human and floral subjects thrive side by side, blending through compositions and informing one another. Somewhere in spaces between the incalculable forms of relationships and connectivity, coalesces the experiences that color perception. Heidi Howard and Esteban Cabeza de Baca’s Night & Day Dreams breaks apart these factors, at times capturing this dissection on the same canvas—ultimately speaking to the interwoven layers embedded within our shared realities.