Bonsai demonstration by Juan Llaga from Philippines

Last weekend I attended a demonstration by a Pilipino bonsai artist Juan Llaga at the Tops Weekend organised by the Illawarra Bonsai Society. As always, I really enjoyed the event, but was mildly disappointed by this year’s international demonstrator.

Images above show ‘before and after’ of the first part of his demonstration. I honestly couldn’t see the point of it. He could have used a miniature umbrella instead of a tree to achieve the same effect.  

Images below show ‘before and after’ of the second and main part of his demonstration. The forest planting assembled by Juan lacks cohesion and falls short in the following areas:

-       sub-optimal arrangement of trees in terms of their height;

-       inconsistent angles at which the trees are planted;

-       thoughtless branch arrangement; 

-       unnecessary and repetitive jins.

In the week following the demonstration, I came across something written by Ming dynasty scholar Shih T'ao. He wrote about painting trees: "The ancients were in the habit of representing trees in groups of three, five, nine or ten. They painted them in their various aspects, each according to its distinctive appearance; they blended the uneven heights of their silhouettes into a living, harmonious whole. I like painting pines, cedars, old acacias and junipers, often in groups of three of five. Like heroes performing a war dance, they display a wide variety of attitudes and gestures; some lower their heads, others raise them; some double up on themselves, others point straight and boldly upward." This passage reminded about the weaknesses in Juan Llaga's forest planting composition.

My visit to Ha Long Bay

Bonsai often draws inspiration from traditional Chinese paintings, and many famous paintings of the Ming and Qing era are inspired by the weathered hills of Guilin in South China. These hills are karst or eroded limestone formations. I’ve never seen Guilin, but during my trip to Vietnam I got to see spectacular karst formations of Ha Long Bay. I felt that potted trees and miniature landscapes, omnipresent in Vietnam, draw a lot of inspiration from the natural wonder of Ha Long Bay.

A modern-day bonsai kōan

A Japanese friend once told me a modern-day bonsai kōan. Kōan is the Japanese word for a paradoxical anecdote or a riddle used by Zen masters to make their disciples understand something. So, here it is.

Once upon a time, during Japan’s economic boom, there was a corporation. Back in those days, companies supported employees’ recreational activities and this particular one sponsored an in-house bonsai club. The company hired a bonsai master to instruct the club members and his bonsai were displayed in the headquarters foyer. Every day, hundreds of people passed by the bonsai display, but hardly anyone took notice of it.

All good things come to an end and with the onset of economic depression the company began to cut costs. It gave the boot to the bonsai master, but asked the club to continue displaying bonsai in the foyer. The employees happily started showcasing their own work and suddenly everyone began noticing and talking about the bonsai in the foyer.  

Why do you think trees created by the bonsai master were not obvious, while bonsai trees by amateurs were conspicuous?

Demonstration by Min Hsuan Lo

Another winter is over and it's time for another ‘Tops Weekend’, the annual event held in Sydney by the Illawarra Bonsai Society. You can see my blog posts about some of the previous guest demonstrators at 'The Tops' here: Marc Nöelanders, Robert Steven, Steve Tolley. This year’s guest demonstrator was Min Hsuan Lo from Taiwan. This wasn’t his “first rodeo” in Australia. A couple of years ago he demonstrated at the National Bonsai Convention in Perth. The feedback about him at that time was good and I was especially curious about his demonstration at the Tops. 

During the workshop on Saturday morning, I noticed that in some instances Lo made unorthodox decisions. This observation was confirmed during the Saturday night demonstration. The material Lo chose for the demo was a Juniper which was achingly suitable for an informal upright design (see images below). Previously, Marc Nöelanders and Mauro Stemberger worked with very similar material from the same source and produced almost identical informal upright results. I was bracing myself for another one just like it, when Lo told us that he hasn’t decided what style it’s going to be, but it not going to be informal upright.    

Lo explained his intention with a joke. He said that he feels like a school boy facing typically boring expectations from his farther and it would be almost common sense for the boy to defy such expectations and do the opposite. I think Lo wanted to do something unconventional to stimulate our “artistic muscles” and to show the audience the world of artistic freedom where “left-back-and-right-makes-informal-upright” stereotype is just a small piece of a puzzle. You can see the final result of the demonstration in the right hand image below. It is not influenced by the Japanese conventions. There is potential for future elegance and balance in the design. It is unrefined and unfinished, but I could see the beginning of a tree with individuality and a degree of uniqueness.

In a week since “The Tops” I heard a rumour that “some people didn’t get him”.  Lo spoke with a heavy accent and I could see the audience struggling to understand him. I spent years working in Penang where everyone spoke Lo’s native dialect (Hokkien Chinese). Understanding him was "a walk in the park” for me. He was very relaxed, spent a third of his demonstration talking with lots of humour and at the end he produced something that got my attention. So, I like him.

My workshop with Naoki Maeoka

I write a bonsai blog, but never mention my bonsai in it. Seems dishonest, but my bonsai collection is quite ordinary and I don’t make it a secret. This time, I have to show one of my trees because it got an unexpected makeover in a workshop with Naoki Maeoka this month (see my blog post about Naoki here http://lomov.blogspot.com.au/2015/11/bonsai-artist-naoki-maeoka.html). First, a quick rundown on this tree's prior history. It is a Lebanese Cedar (Cedrus libani). I bought it as a five-year-old starter stock plant from a bonsai nursery in 2007 (leftmost image below). By the end of 2008 I made a number of severe bends to its trunk (image below). In 2012, its growth was stunned by the grubs of the Punctate Flower Chafer (see my blog post about this pest here http://lomov.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/pest-of-month-punctate-flower-chafer.html). Believe it or not, the pot in the image marked ‘2012’ contained 24 fully grown grubs of this beetle. The rightmost image shows how this tree looked like last month. To be frank, I neglected it for the past couple of years.

This month, I took this tree to the workshop with Naoki and the leftmost image below shows it after the workshop. I must say, it was an unexpected outcome. The centre image below shows this tree digitally re-potted. The angle of the trunk is different and the foliage pad is adjusted accordingly. The tree is planted in a nanban style pot made by me specifically for this tree. The pot is slightly too big, but at this stage, I am not willing to reduce the root system any further. The rightmost image shows my impression of the tree’s future look.

Bonsai artist Naoki Maeoka

This post is a little tribute to the craftsmanship and artistry of Naoki Maeoka. He was my “oyakata” while I was playing a deshi-for-a-month during my residency at the Fujikawa Kouka-en in Osaka (see the post about my work there at http://lomov.blogspot.com.au/2015/08/my-residence-at-fujikawa-kouka-en-osaka.html). Naoki is a resident bonsai artist at Fujikawa Kouka-en Bonsai Nursery in Osaka. He graduated from Osaka University of Arts and spent sixteen years working as a graphic designer. He began to pursue bonsai as a hobby in 2001. Eventually, his passion for bonsai grew so strong that he gave up his corporate career and completed a traditional five-year apprenticeship under the 2nd generation bonsai master Keiichi Fujikawa. This led Naoki to attaining professional bonsai qualifications awarded by the Nippon Bonsai Association. In 2012 Naoki began teaching bonsai at the Fujikawa International School of Bonsai. He has instructed dozens of students from all over the world and I am privileged to be one of them.

  

Here, I put together few before-and-after images of bonsai I witnessed him styling in June 2015. They represent about two thirds of the trees he styled during that month. Let’s start with the pine tree next to Naoki in the image above. This is a classic Japanese design where the tree evokes that famous pine bonsai illustration from Somoku Kinyoshu (see http://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015086754721;view=1up;seq=4). The very first tree I observed Naoki to style is shown in the image below. It is a Black Pine variety with flaky bark. This bark gives a tree the aged appearance and makes the trunk look much thicker.

  

Below is the top view of a wired and styled branch of this tree.

Below is a Red Pine. Image ‘A’ shows it before the styling, image ‘B’ shows the tree after the removal of old needles and image ‘C’ shows it after the styling. This tree has been sold before Naoki finished styling it.

Below are before-and-after images of two more pines.

The Black Pine shown in the images below is somewhat odd. The images show the styling done by Naoki in June 2015. To see the previous work done on this tree see episode 37 of ‘Bonsai Art of Japan’ on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0LOZ3643sM). This kind of tree presents an artist with a real challenge, a true test of his abilities so to speak and I believe that Mr. Fujikawa and his apprentices were able to utilise most of this tree’s potential.

Apart from working with the trees, Naoki is a highly skilled bonsai pot maker. He carved the pot shown below from a single slab of clay. This method of making bonsai pots allows a lot of creative freedom, but it is very time consuming, therefore pots like this are very unique and valuable.

For Naoki’s latest work see his website at http://bonsai-vibe.tumblr.com/. For more of his work plus the latest events see his Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/people/Naoki-Maeoka/100007071702520. You can also watch an interview with Naoki on Bjorn Bjorholm’s ‘Bonsai Art of Japan’ on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=18&v=jR__9Frwpcg.

Spring kusamono

I don’t have impressive bonsai trees in my collection, but this spring a couple of my kusamono looked nice. The left image shows a native orchid Dendrobium kingianum in flower. The image on the right shows a South African succulent Adromischus cooperi with flower spikes. It is satisfying to see plants thriving in containers made by oneself.