Creative Arts Initiative

Martin Kruck is a visual artist whose project often involve multi-layered interpretations of place.

Sam Van Aken, creator of the “Tree of 40 Fruit Project,” been described as “part Dr. Seuss, part Frankenstein, and just about everything fantastic.” During his CAI residency, he will work with faculty and students from many UB departments, as well as local artists in the field of bio-arts, and community organizations to develop an urban orchard in Buffalo's historic Fruit Belt neighborhood.

A discussion of the major themes present in the Kruck’s work such as “landscape as culture" and "nature as commodity.”
Kruck will provide an overview of the past 20 years of his artmaking and showing images from various series of photographic and print-installation projects. He will also discuss his creative process and current work.

Filmmaker Valery Lyman will discuss her work and her upcoming exhibition, “Breaking Ground,” at Silo City Oct. 3-6. Both this event and the exhibition are FREE and open to the public.

Valery Lyman’s “Breaking Ground” is a meditative, site-specific exploration of the cycle of expansion, migration and abandonment that has characterized much of America’s industrial history. “Breaking Ground” evokes the memory of those who worked at the Silo City site and invites the public to consider its own history in relationship to other places.

Filmmaker Valery Lyman will discuss her creative process and her current installation, "Breaking Ground."

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.