Sam Van Aken

Through the Creative Arts Initiative, Van Aken will be developing a project entitled the Tiburtine Tree. In Natural History, Pliny the Elder, describes a tree in the Tiburtine region “grafted in lots of ways, loaded with fruits of every kind, with nuts on one branch, berries on another, and in other places vines, pears, figs, pomegranates, and the different varieties of apple.” Although reported to have existed centuries ago, this fete of propagation has been unable to be replicated.

Developing new methods of plant propagation through the processes of grafting  and utilizing strains of the Nicotiana plant to graft cross genus, the artistic aim of this project is to create a living cornucopia that grows from a single tree, with the biological implications including creating a means to deliver gene editing, m-RNA, proteins to a wide range of plants on demand.

https://www.samvanaken.com/

Sam Van Aken is a contemporary artist who works beyond traditional modes of art making, crossing artistic genres and disciplines to develop new perspectives on such themes as communication, botany, agriculture, climatology, and the ever-increasing impact of technology. Employing “anti-structures and unknowing as generative processes”, Van Aken’s interventions in the natural and public realm are seen as metaphors that serve as the basis of narrative, sites of place making, and in certain cases have become the basis of scientific research.

Born in Reading Pennsylvania, Sam Van Aken received his undergraduate education in Art and Communication Theory. Immediately following his studies he lived in Poland and worked with dissident artists under the former communist regime through the auspices of the Andy Warhol Foundation and the United States Information Agency. Van Aken received his MFA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and since this time his work has exhibited nationally and internationally receiving numerous honors including a Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, Association of International Curator’s of Art Award and a Creative Capital Grant.  Sam Van Aken lives and works in Syracuse New York, where he is currently an Associate Professor and the Graduate Program Coordinator for the School of Art at Syracuse University. Van Aken’s work is represented by Ronald Feldman Fine Arts.