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100 years ago,
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there were 2,000 varieties of peaches,
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nearly 2,000 different varieties of plums
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and almost 800 named varieties of apples growing in the United States.
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Today, only a fraction of those remain,
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and what is left is threatened by industrialization of agriculture,
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disease and climate change.
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Those varieties that are threatened include the Blood Cling,
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a red-flesh peach brought by Spanish missionaries to the Americas,
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then cultivated by Native Americans for centuries;
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an apricot that was brought by Chinese immigrants
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who came to work on the Transcontinental Railroad;
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and countless varieties of plums that originated in the Middle East
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and were then brought by Italian, French and German immigrants.
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None of these varieties are indigenous.
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In fact, almost all of our fruit trees were brought here,
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including apples and peaches and cherries.
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So more than just food,
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embedded within these fruit is our culture.
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It's the people who cared for and cultivated them,
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who valued them so much that they brought them here with them
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as a connection to their home,
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and it's the way that they've passed them on and shared them.
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In many ways, these fruit are our story.
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And I was fortunate enough to learn about it
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through an artwork that I created entitled the "Tree of 40 Fruit."
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The Tree of 40 Fruit is a single tree
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that grows 40 different varieties of stone fruit.
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So that's peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines and cherries
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all growing on one tree.
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It's designed to be a normal-looking tree throughout the majority of the year,
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until spring, when it blossoms in pink and white
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and then in summer, bears a multitude of different fruit.
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I began the project for purely artistic reasons:
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I wanted to change the reality of the everyday,
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and to be honest,
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create this startling moment when people would see this tree
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blossom in all these different colors
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and bear all of these different fruit.
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I created the Tree of 40 Fruit through the process of grafting.
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I'll collect cuttings in winter, store them,
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and then graft them onto the ends of branches in spring.
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In fact, almost all fruit trees are grafted,
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because the seed of a fruit tree is a genetic variant of the parent.
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So when we find a variety that we really like,
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the way that we propagate it is by taking a cutting off of one tree
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and putting it onto another --
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which is kind of crazy to think
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that every single Macintosh apple came from one tree
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that's been grafted over and over from generation to generation.
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But it also means that fruit trees can't be preserved by seed.
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I've known about grafting as long as I can remember.
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My great-grandfather made a living grafting peach orchards
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in Southeastern Pennsylvania.
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And although I never met him,
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any time anyone would mention his name,
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they were quick to note
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that he knew how to graft as if he had a magical or mystical capability.
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I decided on the number 40 for the Tree of 40 Fruit
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because it's found throughout Western religion
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as not the quantifiable dozen and not the infinite
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but a number that's beyond counting.
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It's a bounty or a multitude.
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But the problem was that when I started,
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I couldn't find 40 different varieties of these fruit,
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and this is despite the fact that I live in New York state,
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which, a century ago,
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was one of the leading producers of these fruit.
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So as they were tearing out research orchards
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and old, vintage orchards,
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I would collect branches off them
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and graft them onto trees in my nursery.
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So this is what the Tree of 40 Fruit look like when they were first planted,
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and this is what they look like six years later.
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This is definitely not a sport of immediate gratification --
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(Laughter)
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It takes a year to know if a graft has succeeded;
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it takes two to three years to know if it produces fruit;
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and it takes up to eight years to create just one of the trees.
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Each of the varieties grafted to the Tree of 40 Fruit
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has a slightly different form and a slightly different color.
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And I realized that by creating a timeline of when all these blossomed
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in relationship to each other,
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I can essentially shape or design how the tree appears during spring.
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And this is how they appear during summer.
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They produce fruit from June through September.
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First is cherries, then apricots,
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Asian plums, nectarines and peaches,
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and I think I forgot one in there, somewhere ...
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(Laughter)
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Although it's an artwork that exists outside of the gallery,
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as the project continues,
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it's been conservation by way of the art world.
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As I've been asked to create these in different locations,
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what I'll do is I'll research varieties
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that originated or were historically grown in that area,
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I'll source them locally and graft them to the tree
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so that it becomes an agricultural history of the area where they're located.
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And then the project got picked up online,
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which was horrifying and humbling.
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The horrifying part was all of the tattoos that I saw
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of images of the Tree of 40 Fruit.
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(Laughter)
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Which I was like, "Why would you do that to your body?"
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(Laughter)
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And the humbling part was all of the requests that I received
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from pastors, from rabbis and priests
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who asked to use the tree as a central part within their service.
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And then it became a meme --
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and the answer to that question is "I hope not?"
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[Is your marriage like the Tree of 40 Fruit?]
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(Laughter)
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Like all good memes,
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this has led to an interview on NPR's "Weekend Edition,"
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and as a college professor, I thought I peaked --
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like, that was the pinnacle of my career --
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but you never know who's listening to NPR.
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And several weeks after the NPR interview,
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I received an email from the Department of Defense.
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The Defense Advanced Research Project Administration invited me
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to come talk about innovation and creativity,
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and it's a conversation that quickly shifted to a discussion of food security.
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You see, our national security is dependent upon our food security.
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Now that we've created these monocultures
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that only grow a few varieties of each crop,
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if something happens to just one of those varieties,
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it can have a dramatic impact upon our food supply.
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And the key to maintaining our food security
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is preserving our biodiversity.
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100 years ago, this was done by everybody that had a garden
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or a small stand of trees in their backyard,
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and grew varieties that were passed down through their family.
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These are plums from just one Tree of 40 Fruit in one week in August.
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Several years into the project,
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I was told that I have one of the largest collections of these fruit
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in the Eastern United States,
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which, as an artist, is absolutely terrifying.
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(Laughter)
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But in many ways, I didn't know what I had.
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I discovered that the majority of the varieties I had
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were heirloom varieties,
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so those that were grown before 1945,
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which is seen as the dawn of the industrialization of agriculture.
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Several of the varieties dated back thousands and thousands of years.
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And finding out how rare they were,
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I became obsessed with trying to preserve them,
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and the vehicle for this became art.
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I would go into old, vintage orchards before they were torn out
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and I would save the bowl or the trunk section
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that possessed the original graft union.
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I started doing pressings of flowers and the leaves
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to create herbarium specimens.
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I started to sequence the DNA.
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But ultimately, I set out to preserve the story
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through these copper-plate etchings and letterpress descriptions.
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To tell the story of the George IV peach,
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which took root between two buildings in New York City --
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someone walks by, tastes it,
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it becomes a major commercial variety in the 19th century
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because it tastes just that good.
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Then all but vanishes,
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because it doesn't ship well
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and it doesn't conform to modern agriculture.
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But I realize that as a story, it needs to be told.
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And in the telling of that story,
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it has to include the experience of being able to touch,
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to smell and to taste those varieties.
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So I set out to create an orchard
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to make these fruit available to the public,
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and have the aim of placing them in the highest density of people
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that I could possibly find.
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Naturally, I started looking for an acre of land in New York City --
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(Laughter)
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which, in retrospect, seemed, like, rather ambitious,
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and probably the reason why nobody was returning my phone calls or emails --
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(Laughter)
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until eventually, four years later, I heard back from Governors Island.
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So Governors Island is a former naval base
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that was given to the City of New York in 2000.
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And it opened up all of this land
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just a five-minute ferry ride from New York.
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And they invited me to create a project that we're calling the "Open Orchard"
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that will bring back fruit varieties
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that haven't been grown in New York for over a century.
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Currently in progress,
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The Open Orchard will be 50 multigrafted trees
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that possess 200 heirloom and antique fruit varieties.
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So these are varieties that originated or were historically grown in the region.
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Varieties like the Early Strawberry apple,
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which originated on 13th Street and Third Avenue.
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Since a fruit tree can't be preserved by seed,
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The Open Orchard will act like a living gene bank,
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or an archive of these fruit.
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Like the Tree of 40 Fruit,
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it will be experiential;
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it will also be symbolic.
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Most importantly, it's going to invite people to participate in conservation
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and to learn more about their food.
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Through the Tree of 40 Fruit,
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I've received thousands and thousands of emails from people,
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asking basic questions about "How do you plant a tree?"
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With less than three percent of the population
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having any direct tie to agriculture,
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the Open Orchard is going to invite people
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to come take part in public programming and to take part in workshops,
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to learn how to graft, to grow, to prune and to harvest a tree;
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to take part in fresh eating and blossom tours;
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to work with local chefs to learn how to use these fruit
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and to recreate centuries-old dishes
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that many of these varieties were grown specifically for.
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Extending beyond the physical site of the orchard,
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it will be a cookbook that compiles all of those recipes.
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It will be a field guide
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that talks about the characteristics and traits of those fruit,
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their origin and their story.
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Growing up on a farm, I thought I understood agriculture,
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and I didn't want anything to do with it.
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So I became an artist --
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(Laughter)
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But I have to admit that it's something within my own DNA.
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And I don't think that I'm the only one.
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100 years ago, we were all much more closely tied to the culture,
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the cultivation and the story of our food,
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and we've been separated from that.
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The Open Orchard creates the opportunity
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not just to reconnect to this unknown past,
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but a way for us to consider what the future of our food could be.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)