Contrada Collective / Collection 02

Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens

Photographs by Mathew Morico

Houston, Texas. Beauty, close to home.

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A formal garden with clipped hedges, a white sculpture, and an arched gateway beside the pale house. — 01Mathew Morico

The pale house with dark green shutters beyond the patterned hedges of the garden. — 02Mathew Morico

A white seated sculpture at the meeting of garden paths, surrounded by rounded hedges and trees. — 03Mathew Morico

A stone figure with a raised arm and an animal at its side, framed by dark foliage. — 04Mathew Morico

A standing stone figure in draped clothing on a round brick base among dense greenery. — 05Mathew Morico

A close view of a seated sculpture’s hand, scroll, and softly folded stone drapery. — 06Mathew Morico

The columned façade of Bayou Bend shaded by a large tree on the lawn. — 07Mathew Morico

An empty chair beside tall green shutters on the sunlit brick terrace. — 08Mathew Morico

Trailing plants and an ornamental wall lantern against a warm pale wall. — 09Mathew Morico

A table and chairs on a shaded porch, seen through a dark doorway toward the trees. — 10Mathew Morico

Garden light through a glass doorway, with colored glass objects beside the window. — 11Mathew Morico

A small decorative vessel on the sill of an octagonal window glowing with soft light. — 12Mathew Morico

A small raised-arm sculpture beside a patterned shadow on a sunlit interior wall. — 13Mathew Morico

A glimpse of the house through trees and layered garden foliage. — 14Mathew Morico

A wooden footbridge and steps continuing into a shaded garden path. — 15Mathew Morico

Sunlight on rocks and water, partially concealed by soft green foliage. — 16Mathew Morico

A note from the founder

Beauty, where we are.

Contrada’s roots are in Siena. Mine are in Houston. Siena helped me recognize a way of living that would become central to Contrada, but the work of noticing it continues here, in the city I call home.

These photographs began with a serene morning walk through the Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens, camera in hand. I found myself lingering over the shape of a garden, the folds of a sculpture, light entering a room. There was no great distance to travel, no need to be somewhere else. There was beauty here, waiting for my attention.

As I build Contrada alongside the demands of life in the hospital, I keep returning to these quieter moments. A coffee in the morning. A nap on the couch with Valeria and Lady. A walk outside, noticing the turn of the seasons in the first cool breeze of autumn. They remind me of the life that all our work in medicine is meant to serve.

Art and beauty are easy to overlook when we speak about health. Yet the ability to seek them out, to pause before them, and to appreciate them wherever we are belongs to my understanding of a life well lived. A garden, a carefully made object, or sunlight across an ordinary wall can invite us to look again at a place we thought we knew.

For me, this is the essence of Contrada’s “Health, lived.” Art and beauty are part of the life we are caring for. Siena gave that conviction a form; Houston gives me a place to practice it, close to home.

I hope to keep documenting these occasional glimpses of peace within an otherwise hectic life. They are reminders to myself as much as photographs to share: health is not only treated. It is lived.

Mathew Morico