Events with WP at Hidden Gardens near Chicago in 2016:
OKTOBERFEST AT HIDDEN GARDENS October 7 to 9
probably Bonsai Academy in April 2017
probably Bonsai Academy in April 2017
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 east 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!
