The practice display at this month’s Bay Island Bonsai meeting comes courtesy of Jim Gremel. The wonderful itiogawa juniper is one of many Jim has grown from scratch. Itiogawa juniper It’s shown, below, with a colorful pyracantha – a great variety to exhibit this time of year. If all goes well, the berries will last […]
BIB
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 […]
Preparing a display
A few weeks after this year’s BIB exhibit in January, I started thinking hard about what trees to display in 2010. Depending on the work a tree needs, twelve months is not always enough time to prepare it for exhibit. I’d been thinking about showing a large Sierra juniper or a large corkbark Japanese black […]
Learning the art of bonsai display
Two things define Bay Island Bonsai’s monthly meetings for me – Boon’s talks and practice displays. Sure, we get to see videos and slide shows, practice evaluating trees and complete various bonsai-related exercises, but the core of our bonsai theory is expressed through the talks and practice displays. We end each meeting by providing BIB […]
An Exhibit of Fine Bonsai
On January 17-18th, 2009, Bay Island Bonsai held its 10th annual show. To mark the occasion, we increased the size of our exhibit and our auction, opened the event to outside vendors, hosted an after-hours critique for the local bonsai community, and added a demo. It was a lot of work! But we’re happy to […]