Artist couple Esteban Cabeza de Baca and Heidi Howard have embarked on their first large collaborative paintings for their Farley building commission. Entitled Nature Remembers Love, the installation in the Main Lobby is meant “to evoke an empathetic relationship with plants, other animals and the land,” according to Howard. Their commission consists of two different components across the large lobby space. In the South Entrance, two triptych paintings on canvas, measuring nearly 20 feet long and over 6 feet high, depict the natural terrain of New York state, rendering mountain vistas, snow-covered trees, fields of flowers and native wildlife across four seasons and throughout time. In the adjacent elevator bank area, the artists have realized four two-panel murals celebrating the native wildlife of the four corners of the United States from Northeast and Northwest to the Southeast and Southwest. In total, these paintings of trees, flowers, cacti, and grasses communing with bees, butterflies, birds, and other wildlife cover a wall area roughly 120 feet long.
As artists in the age of climate change, the pair share a common respect for the natural world, despite growing up on opposite sides of the country. Cabeza de Baca was raised in California near the Mexico border to Native American and Mexican parents; Howard is the child of New York City artists. Today, they are based out of a shared studio in Long Island City, Queens.