Bjorn Bjorholm Visits the Cleveland Club

The Cleveland Bonsai Club recently hosted internationally known bonsai ace Bjorn Bjorholm for a member workshop. 

Bjorn rotated between members, who brought several different species, including pine, juniper, maple and spruce.   He offered design ideas and assisted them with initial styling, as well as some refining on these long term projects.  He also fielded questions and gave  tips on pruning, wiring, training, as well as horticultural information on keeping their trees healthy.

The dialogue that went on along with styling work was detailed and informative, and well worth an afternoon's work.  Some brief clips of the discussion can be seen on the Akron Canton Bonsai Youtube Channel at this link.

As our bonsai traditions here in Ohio are, of course, relatively new compared to those of Asia, working with such recognized artists as Bjorn to improve  skills --and ultimately our trees-- is a rare opportunity.

Much thanks to the Cleveland Club for inviting our members to this event.

Dan Designs by Committee-- a Novel Format for Club Meeting

Much of the fun --and art-- in bonsai comes from the process. The process involved in taking something ordinary and turning it into something extraordinary. The art of bonsai could be defined as the process of turning raw material to a show worthy tree.

But how does someone accomplish such a process--or even begin?  How are ideas generated for a good design?

ACBS's own Dan Tullius tried out a different format to answer such questions at the August meeting.  He attempted to illustrate this design idea stage of creating a bonsai from raw material. 

Working on a healthy nursery stock yew project, Dan presented a drawing on how he envisioned the tree as a bonsai.  He then called on other club members to propose more design ideas for the yew-- a sort of "design by committee" or idea sharing approach. This meant for much discussion.

Ideas flowed. The tree was rotated to consider different possible fronts. Options for how trunk's planting angle might be changed were looked at. Each design vision for the yew was discussed in detail.  Proposals included 1)a cascade, 2)a neatly curving informal upright, 3)a slightly taller more literati style, and 4) a very short shohin style tree.

This kind of discussion illustrates the value of taking time to study a piece of raw material.  It also showed how things like altering the trunk angle and looking at several possible fronts might aid in planning a design. Additionally the exercise brought home the point of how collaboration can sometimes launch into new ways of looking at the stock, new considerations and ways of envisioning how the tree might look after four or five years of development. It was also valuable to see such discussion involve a specific piece of stock and not just in the abstract. 

This style by committee format was a concept well worth repeating at future meetings. Much thanks to Dan for offering this novel concept and leading this discussion for the club.

A video compilation of some of the discussion ideas is posted our the ACBS Youtube page at this

link:

 https://youtu.be/JN90a1QyN_o