Happy New Year

Its been a while since my last pre christmas post but I have been enjoying this awesome new social network. It's the hottest thing since facebook, twitter and all that nonsense. It's called "actually spending time with friends and family". Not a catchy title but i reckon it may catch on. Im working on an app as we speak.

Father Christmas brought me just what I wanted, a heated propagation thing for the windowsill. Im planning on Juniper cuttings and vegetables a plenty this year...along with the rest of the plans which are afoot.

Although I often seem as though I wander through life without much of a direction, I do have a general five year plan in mind and so far, moving into year four, I am doing ok, except for the lottery win and the holiday home in the south of france. So far building up the Saruyama Empire has been the focus, finding a base, some stock and clients who share the same way of working and vision.

This year will see a little more creation and a little less travelling...hopefully. There will be a few major exhibition based events this year including the upcoming Noelanders Trophy. Mr Snart and myself will be combining forces to pull off another successful trip to what is now pretty much the premier event in the western bonsai calendar...at least until October, when the Artisans Cup will be held in Portland.

Ryan is a man with a very clear vision of where he wants to be and his five year planning is a great deal more ambitious than mine. We do have a number of similar ideas and visions which are playing themselves out in their own ways. One of the main ideas is that for all the artistic posturing that we do as a bonsai community, claiming that we are artists and what we do is valid and has meaning; not much is done to actually engage the art community or to show bonsai to the public at large in a similar way to which more conventional art forms are shown. Until bonsai is exhibited in the same way as other art forms are in the west and appreciated by an audience of non bonsai enthusiasts who really should be the arbiters of validity, can we really claim to be artists? Does it even matter? Should we just fiddle with our trees in the garden and not worry ourselves too much?

Preparations begin in earnest for Noelanders on Sunday, trees prepped, mossed and tarted up, tables polished and the bags packed. This year will see new ground in the sense that I will not be embarrassing myself with any alcohol based hilarity, and there will be not one but three professional visitors from the US who are not demonstrators. Kudos for the show indeed.

Onwards and upwards people...resist the wander force...

Something not quite right...

Since returning home on a flight where I fell into a narcoleptic coma, woke up and had some incredible ideas, I have been working on this tree...but there is something not quite right about it and I can't put my finger on what is wrong. I was going for a classical look but with a modern, dynamic Chinese influenced feel, very much a result of my recent trip to Japan...still, I think I need to work on it a little more. My aesthetic is a little mixed up I think. Took me ages to wire as well...

Happy Holidays. Good will and peace to all...

 

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A change is gonna come...

It has been, and still is a busy run in to the end of the year, the promised time at home seems a long distant dream, although next week...next week...

Although I often complain that my schedule is too hectic, it is self inflicted and to be honest the last few weeks have been very interesting and I have come to a few realisations about myself, bonsai and in particular the importance of respect for the natural world which we as bonsai artist profess to worship. I have also had some wonderful moments of never to be repeated bliss.

I just wrote an hours worth of polemic about the ethics of collecting, but then I realised that I am simply going to alienate myself further from the bonsai community...so I will concentrate on the blissfull moments.

Walking down from a windy, rain drenched mountain side in the south of France, having seen the full effects of the dark side of human nature, I climb miserably into the van...the clouds part, the rain stops and the wind dies down...through the radio comes a message from a higher power...

 

Awesome.

It was important for me to see trees in their native habitat and it has confirmed a few things that bother me about modern bonsai...one is that there is no lime sulphur in nature, the other is that most people seem intent on destroying any natural character that collected trees have by bending, carving and making pretty that which is wild, beautiful and powerful almost beyond our comprehension.

Another blissfull moment is seeing the happiness that simple pleasures can bring...like a balloon. Im not getting broody but it has been great to experience the joy of family and the power of new life, potential and the future...reminds me, need to buy seeds for the spring....

Although I didnt take any pictures up in the mountains, I can't finish the blog without posting a picture of a tree...one of my favourites from my trip...sadly it wasn't for sale, although apparently everyone turned their noses up at it when priced at €150...add another 0 and you are close to the price in my eyes.

It is a perfectly formed, incredibly old, barely needs wire to make it look good and been in a pot for 5 years collected sylvestris? I often wonder...insanus omnes furere credit ceteros...the insane man looks at the rest of the world and thinks they are crazy, and that only he is sane. This does not bode well for sales...oh well, as my father never told me, but I'm sure he should have, " 'tis better to be bankrupt and happy than morally corrupt, rich and have terrible taste in trees my son".

As it is almost Christmas, I will leave you with some cheer...and a poem I read this morning whilst waiting for yet another plane.

Life's changes are as brief as the blink of an eye

The passage of human affairs as brief as the straightening of an elbow

My emptiness is like the clouds drifting through the great void

Body and soul are depleted, with nowhere to turn

 

Which you may take as being miserable and depressing, but what it means is in the title of the blog, the exact same sentiment as Sam Cooke and the feeling I had all this week...a change is gonna come.

 

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Two faced...

After the trials and tribulations ofmthe last couple of weeks, I'm back to my day job of messing up peoples trees. The last couple of days I have been working in Poland at Ibuki Bonsai, a nursery which I have visited several times a year for the last two years. It is good to see a slow and steady progression amongst the majority of trees, thanks mainly to the horticultural care and attention of the owner, Mariusz Folda.

One of the recent additions to the nursery was a Taxus Cuspidata, imported early this year. It arrived and was in a terrible state, weak foliage, poor colour and so I refrained from working on it at the time, allowing it to build up strength. It did so this year and so it was ready for a bit of a transformation.

Looking at the tree, there were several possible fronts and different options for the tree and on consultation with the bossman, neither of us felt really strongly one way or the other and I predicted that it would probably end up being almost equally viewable from either side. Perhaps this was the tree to replace the two sided shimpaku which escaped my clutches?

It had been roughly worked so I set about smoothing a few rough edges off, particularly the tool marks and disagreeable sections of the dead wood.

See, I do use power tools...as some bloke once said..." Man is a tool using animal, without tools he is nothing, with them he is all." ...ergo I am a power man?

I soon got bored with that tool and so moved onto some iron bars and jacks...or as they say in Japanese "Jackee" in a high pitched voice that reminds me of the girls comic and does no justice to the power of the jack.

After cranking it like soulja boy, the trunk had moved a little closer to the centre and didn't feel so separate. The trick to using a jack is to do it slow, ensure fixing points are secure and that nothing is going to snap or tear at the point where the jack is in contact with the tree. Good contact with the trunk as opposed to branches is ideal. Moving it slowly in stages allows the tree to tense and relax, so it is put under pressure and then the fibres stretch as opposed to snapping when they reach breaking point. Knowing how far to go is an experience based thing but careful observation of potential tear sites both visually and aurally will help the experience to be gained relatively tear free (geddit?). At times like this, turn off the music and listen for the cracks, there will be all sorts of noises going on, some not a problem, others danger signs...know thy creaks and don't get scared.

After slowly cranking and then screwing the tree in place, it was time to fiddle with the branches. As the tree had previously been styled the secondary branch structure was not too hideous. Bearing in mind the recent vigour history, the time restraints and the objective (make something potentially saleable to a wide audience), little fine wiring was done, but the main branches put in place and the overall structure set.

As it turned out the tree looked ok from two different orientations, so it was almost the tree I needed to replace the juniper that got away, which it seems has had an interesting history from shop to shop on the internet. I could decide where to stick my three bits of wire in the pot to define once and for all the front, so I leave it for whoever buys it, or for Mariusz if he keeps it. Personally I think it should be kept as both, swinging both ways, so depending on which side of the bed you wake up on, depends on the front...

Front one if you fancy chasing the dragon...Has an awesomely unorthodox branch as the main cascading branch.

Or front two if you fancy sitting underneath the canopy of a big , spreading tree...perhaps chasing the dragon has tired you out...

Now, before people go crazy, this is not possible for every tree and it is not recommended to try, to be honest the dragon chasing front is the better by a distance, but tastes are different and so are potential clients. The tree looks perfectly good from both sides because, the fundamental branch structure is not created by cheating. Branches flow from the trunk in a natural way (except for one big one which may be a problem for some or an awesome character point for others), and so they look good from any orientation.

I once tried to tell an American student at Shunkaen that the tree he was making needed to be two fronted. It was a cascading rose and for displaying purposes, a bi-directional tree is useful if flower distribution is poor, or you have fewer trees to make up a multi-tree display. His response was "How? Where will my first branch be? And the back branch?". Say it quietly people, text book bonsai sucks the nut.

Btw. I will try and get some before pics and fom different angles....i did get these though..funny how we make trees in our own image...

Bald head....

Bald head...thankfully one will grow back in a season.

On another note, I have found the next interrogation technique. Forget waterboarding, just put them on a 2 hour Ryanair flight next to not one, not two, but three non stop screaming babies. Begging for mercy before takeoff...

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A successful trip...

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"

I hope I get upgraded on my flight.

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There are times...

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"

I should sleep more really shouldn't I...

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Rock the Casbah...

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.

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