Saturday, January 30, 2016

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

More Noelanders images by Oscar

Oscar has provided me with these good shots of my entries. Thank you Oscar.







Monday, January 25, 2016

Dear Arthur, dear Walter

Hello Walter,

I had to go back and look to verify this, but your last contribution to this open correspondence was at the end of October. I answered you the following week and since then there has been no communication between us. I am satisfied no misfortune has befallen you because I see you are still posting regularly to your blog and you even regularly check in as a reader on the IBC forum. I am glad to know you are apparently alive and well, and I hope you have been able to get out to your beloved mountains for some skiing. I wonder, though, why have you dropped out of our conversation? 

It could well be you are simply too busy to give it any thought. After all, you continue to roam the globe, sharing your vast knowledge with an adoring public, and posting to your blog and maintaining the many world-class bonsai in your extensive collection, and surely these activities demand a great deal of your available time. Of course, you were doing all these things before and still writing back and forth with me on this thread, so I do not think that could be the sole reason. I see you will soon be headlining a weeklong bonsai convention in Germany that goes by the name "Generation Bonsai 2016". As I gather from some advertising I saw, you will be reviewing and passing judgement on the next generation of world bonsai artists. This is an awesome responsibility and no doubt you will have to prepare yourself mightily for such an undertaking! That could be where most of your time is going nowadays, and yet I do not think that is the reason for your silence, either. A man of your enormous energy and ambition can easily carry such a workload, one that would simply crush a person of normal abilities, and still have the time to engage in a minor activity such as corresponding with one of your many admirers, if you chose to do so. 

This leads me to the uncomfortable consideration that something I wrote may have offended you. Reading back over my last open letter to you I realize this could possibly be the case as I said several things that might be construed as "cheeky", or perhaps even disrespectful. But then again there is good cause to doubt this as a reason for your lack of response. You are, after all, a self-professed person of the thickest skin, your hide tougher than an overcooked steak. Back in the days of the Great Bonsai Forum Flame Wars you were famous for standing tall against the most vile of personal insult, then sloughing it off and destroying your detractors with a lethal dose of their own medicine. No, I cannot flatter myself to think I ran you off with insult. Besides, I would never show you any sincere disrespect.

Having so dispatched of all the above possibilities, with what am I left? I must conclude your silence speaks of indifference. You are no longer responding to me because of the most pitiful of all possible reasons: You have become bored of our conversation and moved on. I sigh most deeply at this depressing realization. Would that I could crawl off somewhere and lick my wounded pride in solitude! However, for better or for worse it is my annoying habit to doggedly seek completion in the tasks I undertake, and this project was a public conversation with you, aimed toward a meaningful statement about bonsai philosophy. I do not think we reached that objective. But you played along for a good while and contributed valuable perspective that few others could have provided, not to mention considerable visibility through your worldwide fame and reputation. Thank you for doing that! We stirred up some interest among the IBC community and I think a few good thoughts from other people came out of it, so the venture was not without value as it it. I could say it was satisfactorily concluded if only it had not ended with an ellipsis...   

To my mind, this letter takes care of that. If you have any interest in resuming the conversation, you know where to find me. 

With or without your participation, however, I will soldier on like a lone elephant to the point I set out to make.


Dear Arthur,

with some sort of shock I read your last post. So far in my internet career I was pleaded guilty for writing something quite often. Now I am pleaded guilty for not writing anything.
Well, my silence had nothing to do with our relationship or anything you said. Or maybe you said something along the lines that you needed a break and then we would see. I take it that your sabbatical is over now.
As you write I have no problem  in stirring up this place in parallel to my many other projects.

I came back from Noelanders Trophy ladst night. Another big weekend again. This by now is a monster show. It is in a large Fair Ground with big halls, parking lots for hundreds. There were 85 or so traders with large booths! Over 30 potters all in one convention! The number and quality of offered trees and materiel is mind blowing. A real lot of good to outstanding Japanese trees, like offered in the famous Green Club were there. Plus endless European trees, homegrown of collected. A few thousand visitors. and up to a hundred folks who showed trees. And lots of young people!

It is good to see that bonsai at least appears to be big business. While we can complain about the influence of money in our 'hobby' it helps a lot to some. The money somehow does not find me though. But that is another discussion. It is mainly because I am doing this in a more playful manner. I have the enormous luck of not needing to have an income from bonsai. This makes me free  in many respects. One is to be able to say what I am thinking.

I was not so happy about some trees with plastic crowns winning again. But the judging results are always an enigma anyway. it is really over rated. I am personally beyond striving for trophies (while I would still take one if offered). This is not about me, it is  more about the signal to the young people. At the moment the signal in Europe is: Get very good material with lots of deadwood from Japan, put a plastic top on it. Paint the deadwood bone-white.  Buy a very good finished broadleaved tree in Japan. And you will win.
I do not think that this should be the message - while it is.

The messages from the  Artisans Cup or Bill Valavanis' Show are better in this respect, I think. And, of course the message from the Carolina Expo is something else again - much closer to my heart.

I will indeed work for Generation Bonsai in Germany by the end of March. This came as much of a surprise to me too. Generation Bonsai was invented as the revolutionary place for the young guys protesting against the bonsai establishment. They want to show that they are much better and that THEY will rule the bonsai world much sooner than the establishment had hoped. Now miraculously I am on a big poster with the biggest head. Someone said that this looks like 'The Glorious Severn' and I look like John Wayne. Nice to hear. A wise person on another forum wrote that it a shame that my head is bigger as I have no right for this as the others are so much more  talented and humble and I am an a...le anyway. This is much more constructive and more to the matter, of course and educates the readers to not follow the wrong leaders.

I will report what actually is going on there. If you are interested I will even write about my own role, if I ever find out.

greetings
WP

Sunday, January 17, 2016

Events with WP at Hidden Gardens in 2016



Events with WP at Hidden Gardens near Chicago in 2016:

BONSAI ACADEMY April 12
OKTOBERFEST AT HIDDEN GARDENS October 7 to 9




Location: The Hidden Gardens, 16W656 Frontage Rd. Willowbrook, IL 60527, 20 minutes south of Chicago

Times:
Bonsai Academy 6 pm to 10 pm

Oktoberfest
Friday 9:30 – 5:00 pm
Saturday 9:30 -5:00 pm
Sunday 10:00 – 4:00 pm


Sign up: Call Hidden Gardens (Jeff Schulz) for more information and signing up
630 655 8283
thehiddengardens@comcast.net

Fees: Bonsai Academy: US$ 75 or US$ 35 observers
Oktoberfest: US$ 110/day or US$ 260/3 days// observers: US$ 50/day

Participants: This is for all levels– from outright newbie to master. Yes, all in one seminar and all get something out of it and all have fun. Even accompanying mates who never thought of attending a seminar could have fun. The number can be 20 to 30 or even more folks. One can be fully active participant or observer or passive viewing participant for one, two or three days. This is recommended for undecided newbies and travel company. The status can be changed to active any time- we warn you, most do change the status quickly. If you are not sure whether you want to really do this you are invited to come as 'lurker' for 20 minutes for free and then you decide.

General philosophy: Everyone does what they want to do and how much they want to do. While Walter Pall will make it clear what he thinks should be done it is the participant who decides. The aim is to learn how to approach styling, and learn to see new ways and actually trying them out. New techniques will be taught like e.g. work on deadwood.
But the emphasis is on making design decisions. So many workshops teach wiring and basic techniques. This is taken for granted in this seminar. The emphasis is on what often is not taught: bonsai as art form. It is important to know your place in bonsai which offers many different ways. Learning by doing, learning by case studies is how we reach the aims. On many different trees we discuss and practice art, craft and speak about philosophy. Basic craft like wiring is often avoided to not waste time for things which really make a big difference (while they are important, but there are many workshops to practice these).
In many traditional workshop the teacher makes the decisions for the students who do exactly what he tells them and often the teacher actually does the critical work for the student. So the students never learn how to make decisions. To practice art is to make decisions all the time. The aim of the seminar it to teach how to make the right decisions. Your trees will most of the time not be touched by the teacher in this seminar.

What's going to happen:

Bonsai Academy: compressed form of what we do at Oktoberfest

Oktoberfest:

In the morning the first participants arrive. The nursery crew and Walter can help to choose trees for the workshop. All trees that the participants brought and the chosen ones from the nurser are carried to the greenhouse.
Usually a session of general interest follows speaking about many different subjects related to bonsai.
Then we go to the greenhouse. Walter starts to speak about a tree to the whole class, explain choices and then may actually do a couple of things to the tree to give an example. Then the participants form groups which choose a tree and discuss it for 15 minutes or so. Usually every group has one old timer who knows where to go. Then the speakers of the groups present the trees to the whole class. After some discussions one or more feasible options are decided.
And then this will be actually done. Those who brought a tree can now decide whether they what to do the work immediately or can choose to do nothing with their tree at the moment. Whenever someone is finished the next tree is chosen to study, discuss and work on. The aim is to have many valuable case studies for leaning what usually is not taught at workshops. By presenting each tree to the whole class one learns about a couple dozen trees over the weekend compared with one normal workshops. Much more new experience and knowledge comes from that.
Generally we avoid doing craft work that is time consuming. Not that this work is not important. But we want to spend the time on things which are even more important and not taught usually.
Nobody is forced to work in a certain style. While it is well known that Jim and Walter work a lot in the Naturalistic Bonsai Style the actual style is decided by the participant – and often enough by the tree.
Once in a while Walter will speak about subjects of interest for a while.
An important part of the seminar are the social interconnections during the day and gatherings after work. Many long time friendships were built on these occasions.

Material: All active participants can bring their own trees. This can be very simple material to masterpiece. We speak about every tree in depth. The participant decides what he wants to actually do to the tree then.
In addition the nursery offers a great wealth of material that the participants can discuss and actually work on. These are mostly old to very old collected conifers like limber pine, ponderosa pine, lodgepole pine, Engelmann spruce, Colorado blue spruce. Alpine fir, Douglas fir and others as well as some deciduous broadleaved trees There usually are 200 or more trees available to choose from. A few dozen are outright world class, many very good, all hand selected by myself. This is one of the biggest selection of this kind of trees west of the Rockies.
The 'borrowed' material can be purchased at any time, but it does not have to be purchased. The offer is that you actually do serious styling on the material and only afterwards decide whether you want it for yourself or not.

If someone does not want to participate in the seminar and is only interested in the trees you are welcome to visit the nursery to these special weekends.

Sign up right away!








Events with WP and Jim Doyle in 2016

Events with WP and Jim Doyle in 2016:

WOODSTOCK IX April 8 to 10
OKTOBERFEST IN HARRISBURG Sep. 30 to Oct. 2
WINTER STUDY WITH WALTER AND JIM Dec. 2 to 4


Location: Nature's Way Nursery, 1451 Pleasant Hill Rd., Harrisburg PA 17112

Times:
Friday 9:30 – 5:00 pm
Saturday 9:30 -5:00 pm
Sunday 10:00 – 4:00 pm

Application: Call Nature's Way (Jim Doyle) for more information and signing up
(717) 545-4555
 natureswaybonsai@comcast.net

Fees: US$ 110/day or US$ 260/3 days// observers: US$ 50/day

Participants: This is for all levels– from outright newbie to master. Yes, all in one seminar and all get something out of it and all have fun. Even accompanying mates who never thought of attending a seminar could have fun. The number can be 20 to 30 or even more folks. One can be fully active participant or observer or passive viewing participant for one, two or three days. This is recommended for undecided newbies and travel company. The status can be changed to active any time- we warn you, most do change the status quickly. If you are not sure whether you want to really do this you are invited to come as 'lurker' for 20 minutes for free and then you decide.

General philosophy: Everyone does what they want to do and how much they want to do. While Jim Doyle and Walter Pall will make it clear what they think should be done it is the participant who decides. The aim is to learn how to approach styling, and learn to see new ways and actually trying them out. New techniques will be taught like e.g. work on deadwood.
But the emphasis is on making design decisions. So many workshops teach wiring and basic techniques. This is taken for granted in this seminar. The emphasis is on what often is not taught: bonsai as art form. It is important to know your place in bonsai which offers many different ways. Learning by doing, learning by case studies is how we reach the aims. On many different trees we discuss and practice art, craft and speak about philosophy. Basic craft like wiring is often avoided to not waste time for things which really make a big difference (while they are important, but there are many workshops to practice these).
In many traditional workshop the teacher makes the decisions for the students who do exactly what he tells them and often the teacher actually does the critical work for the student. So the students never learn how to make decisions. To practice art is to make decisions all the time. The aim of the seminar it to teach how to make the right decisions. Your trees will most of the time not be touched by the teacher in this seminar.

What's going to happen: In the morning the first participants arrive. The nursery crew and Jim and Walter can help to choose trees for the workshop. All trees that the participants brought and the chosen ones from the nurser are carried to the greenhouse.
Usually a session of general interest follows speaking about many different subjects related to bonsai. This will most of the time take place in the yurt.
Then we go to the greenhouse. Walter or Jim start to speak about a tree to the whole class, explain choices and then may actually do a couple of things to the tree to give an example. Then the participants form groups which choose a tree and discuss it for 15 minutes or so. Usually every group has one old timer who knows where to go. Then the speakers of the groups present the trees to the whole class. After some discussions one or more feasible options are decided.
And then this will be actually done. Those who brought a tree can now decide whether they what to do the work immediately or can choose to do nothing with their tree at the moment. Whenever someone is finished the next tree is chosen to study, discuss and work on. The aim is to have many valuable case studies for leaning what usually is not taught at workshops. By presenting each tree to the whole class one learns about a couple dozen trees over the weekend compared with one normal workshops. Much more new experience and knowledge comes from that.
Generally we avoid doing craft work that is time consuming. Not that this work is not important. But we want to spend the time on things which are even more important and not taught usually.
Nobody is forced to work in a certain style. While it is well known that Jim and Walter work a lot in the Naturalistic Bonsai Style the actual style is decided by the participant – and often enough by the tree.
Once in a while Jim or Walter will speak about subjects of interest for a while.
An important part of the seminar are the social interconnections during the day and gatherings after work. Many long time friendships were built on these occasions.

Material: All active participants can bring their own trees. This can be very simple material to masterpiece. We speak about every tree in depth. The participant decides what he wants to actually do to the tree then.
In addition the nursery offers a great wealth of material that the participants can discuss and actually work on. These are mostly old to very old collected conifers like limber pine, ponderosa pine, lodgepole pine, Engelmann spruce, Colorado blue spruce. Alpine fir, Douglas fir and others as well as some deciduous broadleaved trees like hedge maples, trident maples, European hornbeam, Japanese maples and some others. There usually are 400 or more trees available to choose from. A few dozen are outright world class, many very good, all hand selected by myself. There are over 150 trees in the range from US$ 50 to 600, about 50 from 600 to 1,500. Everybody can find himself a genuine American collected tree. This is the biggest selection of this kind of trees west of the Rockies.
The 'borrowed' material can be purchased at any time, but it does not have to be purchased. The offer is that you actually do serious styling on the material and only afterwards decide whether you want it for yourself or not.
There usually is a special sale during the seminar weekends. The prices are usually reduced for most items which are offered at the nursery.
If someone does not want to participate in the seminar and is only interested in the trees you are welcome to visit the nursery to these special weekends.

Sign up right away!










Friday, January 15, 2016

Generation Bonsai, March 18 to 26



One week of full action at Minoru Bonsai in Neckarsgemuend, Germany. I will do a workshop on Saturday from 12:00 am to 6:00 pm. It will be in the style of Bonsai Academy: On Sunday I will do a demo on collected deciduous material from 12:00 to 6:00 pm

Now in German, because the majority of participants will speak German. We speak German and English during the workshop.


Standort: Minoru Bonsai Alter Bammentaler Weg 10 69151 Neckargemünd http://minorubonsai.de/

Zeitpunkt: Samstag 19. März 2016 - 12:00 bis 18:00

Kosten: Teilnehmer ein Tag 50 Euro Zuseher 25 Euro

Teilnehmer: sämtliche Stufen, von blutigem Anfänger bis Meister sind gefragt.; sogar mitreisende Gattinnen können sich beteiligen. Anzahl: 20 bis 30 und sogar mehr Teilnehmer können gebändigt werden. Alle finden ihren Platz und alle haben etwas davon. Teilnehmen kann man als Zuschauer, der bloß beobachtet (besonders empfohlen für blutige Anfänger und Außenstehende) bis zum Gestalter, der sich an fremden Bäumen versuchen will. Wer sich nicht sicher ist, dass er teilnehmen will, der kann 20 Minuten lang gratis zusehen und dann muss er sich entschieden. Werkzeug mitbringen, auch Drehscheibe und Draht!

Ablauf: Die ersten Teilnehmer erscheinen bereits ab 8:30 Uhr früh. WP ist am Gelände und berät sie bei der Pflanzensichtung und ev. beim Kauf. WP sucht Rohlinge und 'fertige` Bäume aus, die im Seminar behandelt werden. WP hat auch einige Bäume mitgebracht, die behandelt und ev. verkauft werden. Teilnehmer, die Bäume mitgebracht haben, bringen diese in den Seminarraum.Kurze Begrüßung, Teilnehmer stellen sich kurz selbst vor. Kein langweiliger Vortrag, sondern sofort in eine Fallstudie. WP beginnt mit zwei bis drei Bäumen, die er eingehend bespricht und mit den Teilnehmern diskutiert. Dann werden kleine Gruppen gebildet, die jeweils einen Baum analysieren und dazu 15 bis 20 Minuten Zeit haben. Dann wird ein Sprecher der Gruppe das Ergebnis vortragen und mit den Teilnehmern und WP diskutieren. Wenn alle Gruppen durch sind, dann wird an einzelnen Bäumen gearbeitet, was auch immer das im Einzelfall ist. Es ist aber auch akzeptiert, dass jemand, der einen Baum mitgebracht hat, nicht will, dass an dem gearbeitet wird. Wenn ein Einzelner oder eine Gruppe mit einem Baum fertig ist, dann wird der nächste ausgewählt. So werden am Wochenende mehrere Bäume pro Person bearbeitet. Wenn es passt, erfolgt ein kurzer theoretischer Vortrag von WP dazwischen.
Wir vermeiden, langwierige Arbeiten während des Seminars zu machen. Drahten und feine Holzarbeiten kann man besser in einem stillen Workshop oder zu Hause üben. Das nimmt zu viel Zeit. Wir konzentrierten uns auf die wichtigen künstlerischen Entscheidungen und ausschlaggebenden Gestaltungsschritte.
Keiner wird gezwungen in einem bestimmten Stil zu arbeiten. Wer eigene Bäume mitbringt, der kann das machen was er für richtig hält. Deutliche Empfehlungen von WP gibt es jedoch natürlich.
Die 'geliehenen' Bäuem können sofort gekauft weren, wenn gewünscht.
Offizieller Schluss 18:00 Uhr. aber wer will, der kann noch weiter werken.

Dann Toller Abend bei Minoru Bosnai.

Allgemeinen Philosophie des Seminars: Jeder macht so viel wie er will, die Teilnehmer sollen vor allem lernen, das bedeutet, neue Wege zu erkennen und auch zu begehen. Drahten und so wird in vielen Kursen gelehrt. Hier lernt man, was sonst kaum vorkommt. Bonsai als Kunstform. Voraussetzung ist, dass man seinen Platz in der Bonsaiphilosophie kennt. Dazu muss man erkennen, was das überhaupt ist 'Bonsaiphilosophie'. Lernen an Hand von Fallbeispielen. Am konkreten Fall werden dann Handwerk, Kunst und Philosophie erklärt und besprochen.

Material: Die Teilnehmer können eigenes Material mitbringen. Das kann wirklich alles sein - vom Steckling im Yogurthbecher über gesammelten Rohling, Baumschulpflanze, halbfertigen Bonsai bis zum Weltklassebaum. Das Material wird nur besprochen, niemand muss daran etwas tun. aber er kann. Voraussetzung ist, dass das auch geht - aus Gesundheitsgründen. Dann irgendwelche Bäume aus dem Bonsaicenter - egal was, Rohling, halbfertig, fertig. WP nimmt einige Rohlinge (orientalische Hainbuche, Kirschpflaumen, kleinen Mugos usw.) mit, die bearbeitet werden können. Sie können auch ev. verkauft werden.

Anmeldung:

Minoru Bonsai Alter Bammentaler Weg 10 69151 Neckargemünd Tel.: 0176-20778488 info@minorubonsai.de Anfrage wegen Unterkunft bei Minoru Bonsai

Walter Pall Sonnenhamer Str. 6 82544 Egling Tel.: 08176-455 bonsai@walter-pall.de

Hotels: Hotel Kredell Hoterl 1. Adresse: Hauptstraße 67, 69151 Neckargemünd Telefon:06223 2633 1. Art Hotel Neckar 4-Sterne-Hotel 2. Adresse: Hauptstraße 40, 69151 Neckargemünd Telefon:06223 862768

Demo

Am Sonntag, 20. März von 12:00 bis 18:00 Uhr dann Demo von WP.  Ich werde mehrere gesammelte Laubbäuem in verschiedenen Stadien bearbeiten, weil ich mene, dass die bei solchen Demonstrationen immer zu kurz kommen. Eine Merhheit der Zuseher ist immer an Laubbäumem interessiert.

Thursday, January 7, 2016

Trident maple #9 second wiring

As one can see I don't care much whether this looks pretty. All that counts is function. The wire will stay on for 12 months probably. The crown will eventually be about 20 % larger. Then the pot size will be alright. We'll see and report.