Sam Van Aken is an award-winning contemporary artist, professor of sculpture at Syracuse University and creator of the “Tree of 40 Fruit Project,” which has been described as “part Dr. Seuss, part Frankenstein, and just about everything fantastic.”

Manmade Earth is at the intersection of performance and installation. A guided performance that is created by the attending audience, this piece continues 600 Highwaymen’s singular trajectory of making work both for and by community. The audience that comes together for the performance are the authors of the work.

Duo Axis will use their CAI residency to focus on the nature of duo playing itself. Duo collaboration has in the past consisted of two important but discrete forces. The goal of this project is instead to create a seamless unity of two moving bodies who happen to make sounds as their medium of communication to the audience. By moving fluidly through various identities and tasks as performers, the pianist and flutist will be able to occupy each other’s mental and physical space, melding as one. They seek to develop their collaborative model to produce performances whose aural and visual result is interactive and multi-dimensional.

Sam Van Aken is an award-winning contemporary artist, professor of sculpture at Syracuse University and creator of the “Tree of 40 Fruit Project,” which has been described as “part Dr. Seuss, part Frankenstein, and just about everything fantastic.”

A ward-winning contemporary artist and Syracuse University art professor Sam Van Aken grew up on a family farm in Reading, PA, but he spent his college years and much of his early career focused on art rather than agriculture.