Nature Is Healing

Preston Gaines’ pandemic hobby-turned-art form lifts a looking-glass to our relationship with the natural world.

By Peter Simek

ike the rest of the world, in spring of 2020, Preston Gaines was confined to his apartment due to the COVID-19 lockdown, transitioning to remote work and finding new ways to spend the time he suddenly found on his hands.

A talented young architect charting a promising career with the firm PGAL, Gaines turned his attention to the spaces in and around his Third Ward apartment complex. He began gardening the common areas and amassing a collection of houseplants.

The hobby quickly became an obsession. Gaines contacted a local company that supplies plants to offices and struck a deal to acquire their surplus stock. His apartment was soon teeming with plants. Gaines says the drive was partly therapeutic, partly self-expressive. “It was a time when many people sought comfort in activities that brought them joy,” he says. “For me, that solace was found in nurturing plants.”

What Gaines didn’t anticipate was his houseplants' transformative effect on his career.

Blooming Passion

Gaines’ interests span the gamut of art, architecture and design. He grew up in Crowley, Texas, southwest of Fort Worth, in the rural fringe of the metro area.

“My childhood was characterized by endless open land, fields and gravel roads that surrounded our home,” he says. “Our adventures were reminiscent of the whimsical 1988 Japanese animated film by Hayao Miyazaki, ‘My Neighbor Totoro,’ where two young sisters discover magical creatures living in the forest near their home.”

While considering career options, architecture appeared to be the most practical route to transform these creative experiences into a realistic career path. But the lockdown allowed Gaines to rediscover whimsy. His architectural practice evolved in a new, multidisciplinary direction that has been, well, organic.

Grow With the Flow

Gaines staged a warehouse festival event, "Grow with the Flow, " combining art, nature and community empowerment. He included plants to experiences through interactive workshops, discussions and performances designed to foster a sense of belonging, collaboration and growth. He experimented, combining design, video and graphic elements into his immersive installations. These projects led to collaborations with Project Row Houses and the Museum of Contemporary Arts Houston. In August 2022, he left his architecture job to focus on art and became the University of Houston’s Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts Artist in Residence.

Mixing Mediums

Gaines’ work isn’t easily pigeonholed. A wall-sized projected image of technicolor flowers references the pop art of Andy Warhol and psychedelic album covers of the 1960s. His natural subjects' abstract geometry feels inspired by nature and somehow otherworldly. Paired with living plants, it teases an ontological disconnect between how we experience the natural world.

Gaines collects various dynamic experiences and creative tangents into a concept he coined “Inanimate Nature”—“the idea of transcending boundaries between the natural and artificial while delving into the symbolic and philosophical dimensions of mathematics and geometry.”

At its core, Gaines’ work pursues the sensual experience of nature that harkens back to the Houston artist’s pandemic-inspired reengagement with the natural elements that provide solace during global trauma.

“Art can impact communities by providing a platform for selfexpression, healing and empowerment,” Gaines says. “My interactions with various communities and organizations within Houston have fostered a strong sense of social responsibility and a commitment to using my art to uplift and empower those around me.”

Keeper of Memories

The Smithsonian Libraries is the world’s largest library system, housing nearly 2 million books. The UH alumna in charge of them doesn’t take that responsibility lightly.

By Peter Simek

University of Houston alumna Tamar Evangelestia-Dougherty (’96) first experienced libraries not only as a place of learning but also as a refuge.

Growing up the daughter of a single mother on Chicago’s West Side, there were times when her family experienced homelessness. That’s when the Chicago Public Library became more than just a place to find free books—it served as a shelter to stay warm in the winter and cool in the summer. At 14, EvangelestiaDougherty earned her first job shelving books there.

“Libraries made me feel safe,” she says. “I like them, and they like me. I know that’s a strange thing to say, but it seems like I was always able to get a job in one.”

At the Smithsonian, EvangelestiaDougherty is responsible for overseeing some of the United States’ most precious historical collections and cultural archives. Decisions made around how to acquire and appraise archives and then catalog, digitize and disseminate these materials play a powerful role in shaping the collective understanding of our nation’s history. And yet, EvangelestiaDougherty jokes that when she tells people she’s a librarian, they still think of the “stereotype of the bun and the glasses shushing people.”

“People don’t understand that it is really the science of information,” EvangelestiaDougherty says. “It’s cultural heritage. It’s keeping memory.”

While attending the University of Houston, Evangelestia-Dougherty worked late shifts at the Fred Parks Law Library on San Jacinto Street. She studied political science with a minor in Japanese and planned to pursue a legal career. But libraries continued to draw her in. After college, her experience working as a special collections assistant in Princeton University Library’s rare book and manuscript reading room inspired her to pursue a Master of Library Science at Simmons College (now Simmons University) in Boston. In 2021, Evangelestia-Dougherty was named the inaugural director of the Smithsonian Libraries and Archives, perhaps the most prestigious library job in the country.

Evangelestia-Dougherty entered the librarian profession in the early 2000s, at a time when the way in which American institutions preserve cultural memory was being called into question. Historically, dominant cultural narratives have excluded marginalized communities, she says, and exerted undue influence on the stories our artifacts and collections tell.

Much of Evangelestia-Dougherty’s work has been leading institutions toward more representative and inclusive narratives of the past. Sometimes that means advocating for social accountability through reparative justice, like when she helped repatriate the diary of Fidelia Fielding, an important elder of the Mohegan Tribe, from the Cornell University Library to the Tantaquidgeon Museum—the oldest Native American-owned and -operated museum in the U.S.

The biggest challenge, she says, is learning to approach the past with as unbiased a view as possible. That’s not always easy. There have been times when digging through the archives has unearthed uncomfortable personal details that challenged her views on historical figures she had once admired.

A good librarian and archivist, she says, must try to maintain an ethical compass that points toward the truth. It is a mission that reflects EvangelestiaDougherty’s personal experience of the library as a cultural sanctuary.

“Librarians,” she says—“we’re very powerful in that we are the ones who facilitate the memories of things you see.”

According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, there were more than 106,000 drug overdose deaths in 2021. The majority involved synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, which took 70,601 lives.

Haile, who speaks in a calm, measured tone, has a scientist’s zeal for the practical and a natural aversion to exaggeration. Still, he is quick to point out just how dangerous fentanyl can be.

“Two grams can kill an individual, and a few grains of some of its derivatives can compromise someone,” he says. “One derivative, carfentanil, is used in veterinary medicine to anesthetize large animals like elephants.”

He pauses.

“And we’re talking about a drug that can be found on the streets, sometimes hidden in other illicit drugs.”

When people consume fentanyl, they’ll feel euphoric effects—and, often, respiratory depression. They’ll lose control of their diaphragm, and the walls of their chest freeze up, resulting in what’s called “wooden chest syndrome.”