This month’s Bay Island Bonsai meeting focused on bonsai design. Members brought trees for critique and designed trees on paper. Both exercises focus on the criteria we use to design attractive bonsai and help to refine the stylistic sensibilities that inform the decisions we make when we work on our trees. The critique also provided […]
Styling
Styling bonsai gives trees their charm. Read the posts below to learn about the artistic decisions we make when working on bonsai.
Finding meaningful forms
I remember one of the first times I flipped through Kindai Bonsai, the Japanese bonsai magazine. Not being able to read a word of Japanese, I studied the photos. What struck me was how similar the black pines looked. I’d grown up with an appreciation of pines and could see that they were different, but […]
2014 Joshua Roth New Talent Bonsai Competition
The Golden State Bonsai Federation’s 37th Convention was host to the 2014 Joshua Roth New Talent Bonsai Competition. The event has become one of the better venues for recognizing new bonsai talent in North America. From the ABS website: The Joshua Roth New Talent Bonsai Competition is an annual competition to recognize and promote new bonsai […]
Daisaku Nomoto workshop
I recently had the opportunity to participate in a workshop led by Daisaku Nomoto. In town from Miyazaki, Japan, to help with the BIB exhibit, Nomoto spent the day helping a handful of students with their trees. I spent most of the day with a white pine I’d picked up at last year’s BIB Auction. […]
Making a big cut
While maintenance work like minor cutback or wiring can make a tree shine, it’s the larger cuts that really speed along development. Of course, we don’t always enter workshops expecting to make these big cuts. Such was the case for a tree that showed up to last weekend’s Bay Island Bonsai workshop. After selecting a […]