FACE 1:  Sam Van Aken - Creator of "The Tree of 40 Fruit)
Award-winning contemporary artist and Syracuse University art professor Sam Van Aken grew up on a family farm in Reading, Pennsylvania, but he spent his college years and much of his early career focused on art rather than agriculture. While Van Aken says that his work has always been "inspired by nature and our relationship to nature," it wasn't until recently that the artist's farming background became such a clear and significant influence, first in 2008 when he grafted vegetables together to create strange plants for his Eden exhibition, and then shortly after that when he started to work on the hybridized fruit trees  Tree of 40 Fruit is an ongoing series of hybridized fruit trees by contemporary artist Sam Van Aken. Each unique Tree of 40 Fruit grows over forty different types of stone fruit including peaches, plums, apricots, nectarines, cherries, and almonds. Sculpted through the process of grafting, the Tree of 40 Fruit blossom in variegated tones of pink, crimson and white in spring, and in summer bear a multitude of fruit. Primarily composed of native and antique varieties the Tree of 40 Fruit is also a way of preserving heirloom stone fruit varieties that are not commercially produced or available. 
Treeof40fruit.com,. (2015). SAM VAN AKEN . Retrieved 7 September 2015, from http://www.treeof40fruit.com/

Creative Thinking Skill --COMBINE... put things together to make something new!

FACE 2: Markus Fischer
Markus Fischer led the team at Festo that developed the first ultralight artificial bird capable of flying like a real bird.  One of the oldest dreams of mankind is to fly like a bird. Many, from Leonardo da Vinci to contemporary research teams, tried to crack the "code" for the flight of birds, unsuccessfully --until the SmartBird. Markus Fischer is the German company, Festo's,  head of corporate design, where he's responsible for a wide range of innovations.
SmartBird is inspired by the herring gull. The wings not only beat up and down but twist like those of a real bird -- and seeing it fly leaves no doubt: it's a perfect technical imitation of the natural model, just bigger. Its wingspan is almost seven feet, while its carbon-fiber structure weighs less than a pound.  Who knows what types of useable inventions will be developed which use some of the techniques of the SmartBird.

Creative Thinking Skill:  ASSOCIATE --relate one thing to another to create something new.

FACE 3:  Jirka Vincse Johnathan Väätäinen - Jirka is a graphic design artist from Australia who decided to image what Disney characters would look like if they were real people. Jirka has done an excellent job at showing each of the characters personalities in these highly detailed digital illustrations all of which were achieved using mixed media techniques such as digital painting and photo manipulation. Did he succeed in doing that? You be the judge.

CREATIVE THINKING SKILL:  Elaborate - add details; make something new by adding on to something already created.

Anna from Frozen

Aurora - "Sleeping Beauty"

Jasmine

Rapunzel

Elsa - Frozen

Belle

Ariel

Mulan

Snow White

Alice

Cinderella

Pocahontas

Tiana - Princess and the Frog

FACE 4:  Louie Psihoyos and Travis Threlkel
The artists Louie Psihoyos and Travis Threlkel projected digital images of endangered species onto the Empire State Building in an event meant to draw attention to the creatures’ plight.

Using 40 stacked, 20,000-lumen projectors on the roof of a building on West 31st Street, Mr. Threlkel and Mr. Psihoyos illuminated the night from 9 p.m. to 12 a.m. with a looping reel showing what Mr. Psihoyos calls a “Noah’s ark” of animals. A snow leopard, a golden lion tamarin and manta rays, along with snakes, birds and various mammals and sea creatures were projected onto a space covering 33 floors of the Empire State Building — and beyond, thanks to cellphones and Internet connections.
The light show drew attention to the alarming rate at which species are dying out in what Mr. Psihoyos contends is Earth's sixth mass extinction. The men began discussing “the most dramatic thing we could do to get the world to know about what we’re losing,” Mr. Psihoyos said. They wanted to use the photography of National Geographic, add a musical element and project the images on a newsworthy facade. The display made all the news stations locally and nation wide.
Roston, T. (2015). Illuminating the Plight of Endangered Species, at the Empire State Building. Nytimes.com. Retrieved 8 September 2015, from http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/31/movies/illuminating-the-plight-of-endangered-species-at-the-empire-state-building.html?_r=0

Creative Thinking Skill: Creative people find ways to get people's attention and turn things around.

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