Studio visit with the great George Preston Born in New York City in 1938, Preston is an accomplished artist, scholar, writer, collector, professor, baseball enthusiast, poet of the Beat Generation and an honored Akan chief in Ghana— George Nelson Preston is a renaissance man with a divine outlook on the world as he has lived it. His life work, rooted in history and memory of the Afro-Atlantic world, Preston embodies a perspective that reflects his reality and life experiences.