After ten days of descending in the circles of hell, I am finally on my way back home. Every time I come I feel older and less wise...but at least I bought some new concave cutters.
Driving here, there and back again has been tiring but fun and hopefully a little profitable. I picked up a few items that will hopefully be gracing the stage at Noelanders, a couple of things for myself and sadly nothing yet for Lady Saruyama...they were sold out! Honest!
However the most important thing abut coming back is to meet people and to learn or see something new...which I did. Relationships are very important in Japan, as anywhere in the world, so keeping peole happy and cementing relationships pays off dividends in the future. I am starting to see those come to fruition and sometimes it feels as though the hard work and the non-bonsai teachings of the Chief have paid off.
One of the most exciting new people I met was David Martinez Moreno, a student at Fujikawa's place in Osaka. He is an art historian and had some incredible ideas about Bonsai and the future, how it can be incorporated into the western art world and appreciation. It was a chance meeting which confirmed a few things that I have been thinking about and have planned. We shared ideas and agreed on many things, it seemed as though it gave validation to my recent train of thought. There seems to be movement amongst many of the younger bonsai artists to change and experiment. The blue touch paper is going to be lit in October...hopefully it will go crazy after that. Or I will. Or possibly bankrupt...
I have a million and one pictures of trees taken but the most impressive thing that I saw was on the way back to the hotel, walkng through the back streets of the anitque district of Kyoto...
It was in a ceramics shop window, the shop specialises in tea bowls and had this piece on display. A piece of very old, hard pine wood. I had to go into the shop and ask about it. The assistant just said, "oh this is something we just threw together...". I have thrown stuff together before, but never like that.
I have been reading a few old books of late, stuff from my previous life...the depth of influence it had on me was incredible in hindsight, one line stuck out in particular...
"What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning"
When you wonder what the hell you are doing. It is 4.30 am and I am sat in a service station outside of Kyoto waiting for the sun to rise. We have just driven from Tokyo, stopping half way to try and squeeze ten trees in to a space that can only take eight. An hour of rearranging and shifting valuable trees around, including a recent prime minister's award winner and there was no solution to the puzzle...other than to take two cars.
I often wonder how there are not more accidents involving bonsai, but it all seems to work.
Tomorrow sees the setting up of the Taikanten and for the first time ever, I am helping to take trees along. It will be an interesting experience I'm sure. Pictures available somewhere on line if someone sneaks a camera in.
I've been in Japan less than a week but it feels like a lifetime ago that I was at home. A fairly packed schedule was made even more hectic with an unxpected trip to Osaka for a large shohin auction...as in the auction was large, not the shohin.
It was an interesting experience, the price of trees fluctuates from year to year and I was suprised at how cheap some things were, and the price of things I thought would be cheap. No doubt next year the autumn winds will blow and it will be reversed.
I managed to pick up a few things including one for myself, but as always with auctions its the ones that got away which I remember...as Jim Bowen used to say, look at what you could have won...
A genuine yamadori shohin juniper....which sadly went just a little bit more than I was prepared to pay. My left kidney has already been mortgaged, so...I had to say goodbye.
If the gods had smiled on me, I could have made this little bad boy from both sides as they were equally as beautiful. I love the idea of trees without fronts, or rather the viewer and creator not being fixated by one singular front. There are a good number of trees out there that look good in pictures taken from a specific height and directly from the front...but when you see them in real life, it looks somewhat different. Masterpiece trees should look good from any viewing angle, not just where the three bits of wire line up. Often when I am doing a demo, I will talk about design options, good points, bad points etc, then start working on the tree...invariable the first question will be, where is the front?
Creating a tree is an organic and fluid process and over time, especially with raw stylings, the front may change slightly, 5 degrees here, 10 degrees there. If we start to become fixated on a front because we stuck a marker in there then the process becomes less fluid and more static. If the tree decides to grow in a different way than we would hope, or our technique causes terminal branch faliure, then we need to change direction slightly. As long as we are there or thereabouts on the first styling and repotting, then no major root work needs to be done to change the front by 10 degrees in any direction or orientation.
Dont take what I have said as meaning you shouldn't have a front to a tree, there is always a viewing angle which is better to look at and that is the one which should be presented to the viewer. What I mean is don't forget the other sides, look to create branching structure that looks good alround.
Anyway...it's all change at the Chief's again, Yannick Kiggen is back for more, he will hopefully be starting a proper apprenticeship if he can get a visa. Hopefully it will be longer than two years because lets face it, in two years you only scratch the surface and the scars begin to heal over, it isnt until the scars are so deep that they last forever and you never forget...(stares off into the distance)
I wish Yannick all the luck in the world, he has already made a good impression, except fr the other day when he forgot to water a maple...so in honour of this new beginning...let's play....
"It's a lot / it's a lot like life...forget all about equality"
Been busy making winter preparations, insulating, heating, ventilating the polytunnel and getting everything under cover. A lot is staying out, but I'm keeping the rain off the pines, sabinas and spruce...most other things are staying in the tunnel and this year if it blows away, I will be amazed.
I did take some pictures this week...I finally found a use for Suiseki...you know them fancy Japanese rocks that sit around just looking nice and pretty...
Perfectly compacted. If only I could get my bonsai to be as useful.
Out to see the big show in Alcobendas tomorrow, Spain is undoubtedly one of the most active countries in the western bonsai world and it will be interesting to see some of the best trees around...sadly no camera but I'm sure someone will post something somewhere.
I'm sure that most of you will have seen the recent exploits up at Willowbog, but in case you didn't...Mr. Snart has put some relatively complimentary pictures of me up on his blog here...
Thanks for the lovely weekend, but thank you even more for yet another tree that I walked away with. I always seem to come away with trees...funny that. This one was a tree I had my eye on for sometime but had been really stopping myself from pulling the trigger on getting it, because I was hoping that someone else would see the potential in this wonderful potentilla...
A rather uninspiring tree and one which had been forgotten on the bench for ages....just the kind of rubbish fantastic tree which is screaming out for me to waste my time and effort on...
and BOOM...a change of angle and some subtle lighting, fannying around with the camera and it suddenly looks pretty awesome. Oh yes.
As luck would have it, I just got this Ron Lang pot earlier in the month...It looks a little large because I can't do photoshop, but believe me it looks pretty awesome. As a combination it looks...pretty....you guessed it...awesome.
I have great hopes for this little bad boy of a natural looking tree. One day who knows where this tree may end up? Probably back on the bargain shelves up at Willowbog as I go bankrupt from buying too many unsaleable trees...not that I am trying too hard to sell them...all my little pretties.
Am off to Spain this weekend for a busman's holiday...going to an exhibition in Peniscola with our lass. Thought I would treat her to a trip to see the European branch of the Sakka Kyokai's big show. I am a member of the Japanese group, but not the European...maybe I should join in the party, but if they see trees like that on my benches, they will black ball me...I guess I should modernise my tastes?
Its been a while since the last post (tm) , and rather than globe trotting, I have been in the UK for most of October, enjoying what can only be described as Great British Weather. Autumn is here and like the other great British institution, the BBC, it is hanging on to the last remnants of faded glory and respectability.
A very enjoyable trip to Norn Iron was had, full details and more video, pictures and details than you can shake a stick at can be found courtesy of Mr. Eejit, the inimitable Ian Young. I must say that advertising such as that is very flattering and it is the sort of thing that cannot be bought...so thank you. It was an eye opening trip, seeing what I can only describe as some of the best individually grown deciduous trees in the UK. The general standard was good despite the paucity of professional input until recent years (or perhaps because of it?). The Willowbog influence was apparent and its clear that the internet has helped dramatically. The enthusiasm and desire to learn was refreshing, I look forward to my next trip there...assuming I get the invite.
As I said, the deciduous trees impressed me most and now is the time of year to be focusing on deciduous species. Pruning back and thinning out should be done once the leaves have finished and are starting to drop. After that we have around two weeks to do it before they begin to bleed like stuck pigs. The last couple of days have been heavily deciduous based, including a lovely new tree in the collection of a long standing client.
The first workshop we did together, as a test to see what the then relatively unknown and slightly hairier me could do, he brought me a fat little trident maple which was in need of a sorting out. I gave him a detailed explanation of what the problem was and how to correct it, how if it wasn't sorted soon, it would simply get worse, he agreed and it got pruned back quite hard. In 2014 the tree will almost certainly be punching it's weight at Noelanders. I must have done a good job because we have continued to work together and today I was presented with a similar trident.
The tree is a very nice specimen, had some minor flaws and issues structurally but it had one major problem, something which a great number of tridents and other deciduous trees suffer from. If the time and dedication is not put in to prune and thin out the branch tips down so that effectively at each node the branches split into two, then not only will the naked branch structure look hideous on a close up, but it will also affect the vigour.
From a distance, the tree looks ok, a nice silhouette, but a closer inspection reveals a fundamentally flawed and potentially fatal branch tip structure. The grotesque lumpy clusters of tiny twigs have been created by lazy technique which is equivalent to topiary. Simply pulling off foliage and shoots when in leaf to create a nice outline.
Rather than carefully and religously pinching out the new shoots as they grow, thinnng out strong areas and creating a delicate branching structure, handfuls of foliage are roughly plucked on a single occasion, leading to clusters of branches growing from a single node. This lazy technique is known as cluster plucking a tree.
Once a tree has been repetitively cluster plucked to this level for a number of years, the vigour of the branches decreases as the branch tips lignify, harden from the inside, reducing the sap flow and a noticeable decrease in vigour is observed. Similarly to satsuki, the branch tips must be young and green, one year old shoots, or the tree gets old, gets tired of constantly being plucked and gives up.
When faced with a branching structure such as this, the only thing to do, is to rip it up and start again.
...total and utter cluster plucking mess
Once the majority of bad branch tips are removed, the tree looks a whole lot lighter and less full but it is now back on the upward slope as opposed to the terminal decline it was on. Deciduous trees need to be renewed every so often, the branch tips need to be replaced when they get old and delicacy in the branch tips is necessary.
There are still a few branches that need removing but at least the branches will regain some vigour now. Protection over the winter and a period of free growth is necessary to get the tree back up and running. The good thing about tridents is their vigour and predictable back budding on old wood. Give the tree three years of dedicated work and it will be very well ramified, delicate and have healthy, cluster free branch tips.
This weekend I will be up at Willowbog for more workshops, is great when I go places where they ake lots of pictures...means I don't have to.
Preparations for Noelanders are moving ahead with great speed...lots of excitment and enthusiasm amongst the Saruyama faithfull...in times of great bonsai depression it is great to have something to look forward to...Like me, I'm scheduled to work on my own trees in December.
Back in the land of the unpredictable weather and as I will be effectively out on the road until December now is the time to get the winter preparations ready...although this morning was a gloriously autumnal morning. One of those days when you are glad to be alive...
Returning back after just ten days there had been a massive change in foliage colour, and especially in one of my favourite species...the mighty Sumac. A much under used tree in western bonsai because you can't actually do anything with it other than just kind of grow it...and prune it when it gets too big. No fancy wiring nor styling decisions to be made so it gets over looked. Regular readers may know this tree but this year is the best colour I have ever seen it, and so here you are...
You can't beat it for natural character, low maintenance and awesome autumn colours...
A big brother in the garden looks on....
and some little brothers wait to be potted up...love the way that only the edge which is not sheltered by the bench has turned...but that is a sign that the frosts are coming. Propane heater arrives tomorrow and will get most stuff inside, everything else will under cover.
Today was spent clearing out the greenhouse, getting yet more blocks and stuff for yet more shelves...but that means more space for more trees...but just for the time being...'Scuse me while I kiss the sky...
Im sat in the airport on my way home from a very interesting trip which included an apperance at the 6th International Stone Show in Hershey PA. It is my third time speaking there and it seems people are yet to get sick of me and think I still have something to talk about regarding suiseki, so it was nice to be part of it.
Mr. Morimae of S-Cube fame came over and did presentations on various topics but the focus was the use of suiseki with bonsai, a topic which many people find difficult to come to terms with. One common theme throughout the three conventions I have been to has been the desire from the majority of the udience to have hard and fast rules and regulations. "You can't do this, you can't do that..." It is appropriate to think in these terms very much at the starting point but this idea must be moved away from, rather than think negatively, it is always better to think "It is better to do this..." or "we must do the best with the tools at our disposal".
I learnt a lot and even became interested in a slightly more modern interpretation of stone appreciation. Now, this is in no way trying to be suiseki but it is trying to be, and succeeds incredibly, a wonderful work of art. One of the vendors at the show was Tony Ankowicz, an artist/craftsman/stone hunter from Wisconsin and he had this creation on his booth. I immediately fell in love and after a few hours of consideration and then talking to Tony, I pulled the trigger and purchased it.
He had some other stones with him with even more fantastic bases but the lines and curves of both the stand and the stone were outstanding. The craftsmanship on the base was incredible and I couldn't resist the challenge of finding a use for it as a display item. Discussion with Mr. Morimae and Wil Lautenschlager confirmed my thoughts that this represents an exciting development in the worldwide appreciation of stones, bringing it in to a modern era but retaining the essential characterisitcs of an art form which has origins dating back two thousand years. We were all excited about his work and saw great vision and craftsmanship. It was refreshing to see some thing new and definitely western as opposed to the rigid copying of Oriental practice.
I have to now find a way of displaying it alongside a bonsai. I have a sabina that looks as though it will may be possible to display with, but it is still very immature. Still, the rock can wait...
Speaking of display, the Noelanders trophy will soon be upon us. Mr. Snart and myself will be offering the same service for UK enthusiasts who want trees taking over and bringing back, so please contact us for details. We should have a good showing again, so I look forward to organising that again.
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