Sam Van Aken
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. 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 some cases even 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 been exhibited and placed nationally and internationally. He has received numerous honors including a Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, Association of International Curator’s of Art Award and a Creative Capital Grant. Most recently, his work has been presented as part of Nature-Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial with the Cube Design Museum, Netherlands. Sam Van Aken lives and works in Syracuse New York, where he is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Art at Syracuse University.
Tree of 40 Fruit
The Tree of 40 Fruit projects are a series of hybrid trees that are grafted to produce forty different types of antique and heirloom stone fruits, serving as a living archive of fruit varieties that Americans rarely encounter today. Roanoke College was gifted a Tree of 40 Fruit in 2017 in honor of the college’s 11th President, Michael C. Maxey, located on campus in the Olin Courtyard. Van Aken’s work treats fruit not just as an agricultural product, but as a cultural object, revealing the compelling narratives that are embedded in our food. These works document our agricultural evolution and protect fruits that may have otherwise been forgotten, saving them for future generations to experience their delights for years to come.
The Botanical Prints, 2023, copper plate etching, letterpress, 14.25” x 12.875”
Roanoke College Permanent Art Collection, Gift of Joanne Leonhardt Cassullo and the Dorothea L. Leonhardt Foundation, Inc.
The Botanical Prints by artist Sam Van Aken are a continuation of a larger body of work that emphasizes the agricultural history of the United States and highlights the impacts of industrialized agriculture on biodiversity. Many fruit varieties have nearly vanished due to the commercialization of our produce as the agricultural industry shifted to only growing fruits that earn the greatest profits. For more than 15 years, Sam Van Aken has created living sculptures and detailed prints that preserve these nearly extinct fruit varieties.
The Botanical Prints are a series of twelve hand-pulled etchings and letterpress descriptions that highlight several antique fruit varieties—including peaches, plums, pears, and apples—that were once popular cultivars in the United States. The copper plate etchings capture the visual qualities of the species’ leaves, branches, blossoms, seeds, and fruits. The letterpress descriptions describe the origin, history, taste, and defining qualities of the different trees.
Black Tartarian Cherry
The Botanical Cyanotypes, 2024,
cyanotype prints, 18.875” x 13”
Roanoke College Permanent Art Collection, Gift of the Artist
The first botanical prints employing the cyanotype process were made by the English botanist and photographer, Anna Atkins, who placed seaweed on sensitized paper exposing it to the sun and capturing its negative form. These cyanotypes, although employing more contemporary processes are inspired by Atkins as they aim to capture the blossoms, foliage, and form of the rapidly vanishing heirloom and antique fruit varieties being preserved through the Tree of Forty Fruit and Open Orchard projects.
George IV Peach