Last Tuesday, Akio Kondo visited Bay Island Bonsai’s monthly meeting and gave a mini demo and critique. He worked on two small shimpaku and offered suggestions for further developing a few member trees. Kondo has visited the U.S. the past few summers, making time to work on client trees and teach workshops (see write-ups from […]
Akio Kondo
Akio Kondo bonsai critique
This month’s Bay Island Bonsai meeting featured a critique by Akio Kondo. Members brought the trees and Kondo provided guidance about topics ranging from care, to styling to display. Here are some highlights from the event. Western juniper Kondo appreciated the thinness of the two trunks, and liked that the shorter trunk was thinner than […]
Scenes from a Kondo workshop
I recently had the good fortune to attend a bonsai workshop run by Akio Kondo. In contrast to the last Kondo workshop I attended, this event was more pensive, more contemplative. My trees experienced no radical transformations. Instead, we spent time making plans for the future and talking about how and when to execute these […]
Akio Kondo critique
Membership has its benefits. This month’s Bay Island Bonsai meeting featured a critique from Akio Kondo, a Kokufu prize-winning bonsai artist from Japan. Kondo sizing up a procumbens juniper by Peter Tea Kondo first visited California in 1996 to practice bonsai for a year after completing his apprenticeship to Kihachiro Kamiya at Kihachi-en. Kondo offered […]