Sam Van Aken's Tree of 40 Fruit is unbelievable! I first learned about this amazing art venture over the summer. Sam Van Aken, is not a geneticist but an artist. He works as an associate professor in Syracuse University's art department. He envisioned a tree that bloomed with petals of multiple colors and bore a variety of fruit, and he sought to make his dream a reality. Van Aken uses the old-fashioned process of grafting in the creation of his unique trees. He takes small budding branches from stock trees in his nursery and inserts them into a hole in another tree, allowing them to grow into one plant system. Tending these trees is a tedious process of pruning and grafting. When Van Aken first started this project, he face difficulty in finding a variety of stone fruit in New York. "I realized the extent to which we've created these monocultures," he commented about the lack of variety in American grocery stores. Grocers claim that the minimal amount of choices in fruit in stores is largely a result of provincial preferences and tastes among the American population. We don't realize how much we are missing out on. Van Aken ultimately came across the New York State Agricultural Experimentation Station, where his eyes (and tastes buds) were opened up to all the variety of stone fruit. He ended up purchasing the station, and starting his own nursery for his ambitious project.
Van Aken draws careful color-coded diagrams of his trees that take into account the various growth patterns of each grafted tree. He designs and crafts his trees as he would any other work of art, and he sees them as living sculptures. Over the past couple of years I have studied wide spectrum of earth art, but this cooperation between man and the natural world is perhaps the most impressive piece I have come across. Van Aken inspires me to think outside the canvas and the classroom, to envision and create work that responds to social/environmental stimuli.
Van Aken draws careful color-coded diagrams of his trees that take into account the various growth patterns of each grafted tree. He designs and crafts his trees as he would any other work of art, and he sees them as living sculptures. Over the past couple of years I have studied wide spectrum of earth art, but this cooperation between man and the natural world is perhaps the most impressive piece I have come across. Van Aken inspires me to think outside the canvas and the classroom, to envision and create work that responds to social/environmental stimuli.
Sam Van Aken's grafted fruit trees are still quite young, but this artist rendering shows what he expects the "Tree of 40 Fruit" to look like in springtime in a few years.
"I look at the Tree of Forty Fruit as an artwork, a research project, and a form of conservation. As an artwork, what is does is it interrupts and transforms the everyday. As a research project, it creates one of the first comprehensive timelines of when all these varieties blossom in relationship to each other, which becomes important when we consider pollination. And finally, as a form of conservation, by taking all of these heirloom, antique, and native species, grafting them onto the trees of forty fruit, and then placing them throughout the country, in some small way I'm creating my own type of diversity and preservation." |  |
