Mr. Walter,
Absolutely outstanding article, we are indeed fortunate that you got the holiday blues this year if these thoughts are the result...I am continually amazed at not only your ability to create great bonsai, but also your understanding of human nature as it relates to bonsai and art in general, and the ability to convey this understanding to others so clearly in more than one language...
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Originally Posted by Walter_Pall
The tree per se is not beautiful or good, it only sends signals. The receiver must have learned to recognize the signals , to decipher them and to appreciate the tree. This takes a long education. Only the interpretation of signals leads to information, to evaluation, whether one sees a poor or a good bonsai. The information is not in the tree, but in the brain of the viewer. “Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder”. The way a viewer sees a bonsai is closely connected to the experience of a lifetime, to the collected wisdom of the viewer. It is interesting to note here that the wisdom stored is not only in language form but also in picture and emotional form.
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After several readings of this wonderful article, this passage keeps jumping out at me...We so often see a tree or bonsai but we don't spend the time to really look and study it...We would probably all be better at creating good bonsai if we would only spend more time building our 'experience of a lifetime' and 'our collected wisdom' truly looking and studying trees both as bonsai and 'in the wild'...
I am reminded of an experience back in the early ‘80s, I was pursuing a career as a professional musician and on the road [away from home] most of the time…I was not growing trees in pots…this was a time between my first and second attempts at bonsai…the first time I used horticultural experience I had acquired growing many types of plants, and my inspiration and teaching was only photos, a one time encounter with a Korean bonsai grower, and a few actual sightings of bonsai trees…I had not even read a how-to book, and teachers and demos were unknown to me [not a very impressive start, and certainly not an impressive collection]…
While playing a gig in St. Louis, Missouri I made a trip early one morning to the St. Louis Botanical Gardens…I arrived as a bonsai exhibit was being set up [I think by a local club]…I had nothing else to do until about 6:00 that evening so I spent my day enjoying the many plants at the garden and spent much time in the central courtyard where the bonsai exhibit was set up…There were probably about a hundred trees on exhibit at the show, most of which I considered to be of good quality, and they had 3 very impressive tokanoma set up…the club members of course were gathered mostly in the area of the tokanoma displays answering questions and assisting people as well as giving a few demos throughout the day [mostly on basic bonsai technique and horticulture practices]…a very well organized event in my opinion…
The three trees that actually got my attention the most were displayed at the opposite end from the tokanoma area…they were a ‘flat-top styled bald cypress’ [my first experience with this style], a Japanese boxwood which was probably about 22 inches tall with a base of about 1 ½ inches, little taper and only a very gradual curve like half of the McDonald’s arch going from base to apex, with a very rounded crown [reminded me of many poplar or cottonwood trees I had seen along the banks of the Mississippi River], and an Alberta Spruce nearly 30 inches tall very straight, good taper, nice jin work, but with a base to height ratio of about 1 to 15 and the number one branch about ¾ of the way up the tree [looked much like a giant sequoia]…unfortunately the owner of the spruce was deceased and the owner of the bald cypress and boxwood was not at the show, I really would have enjoyed talking to them…There was a bench under a shade tree near these trees and I spent most of my day at the gardens on or near that bench… It seemed to me that the majority of the people that had some knowledge of the Japanese art of bonsai sort of passed over those trees…some even making comments like ‘it is nice but it’s not bonsai’…’I wonder how that got into this show’…most were obviously not impressed…However, the larger percentage of those viewing the exhibit that day seemed to be tourists, or people who had come to see the gardens and had no real concept of what a bonsai “should” look like, or the ‘rules and guidelines of “good” bonsai’…It was these people that made an impression on me that I will never forget…In my opinion these three were the trees in the exhibition that seemed to evoke the most emotion from the ‘general public’…many comments were about how the tree reminded them of a tree that had a special meaning in their life…I will never forget one middle aged lady when speaking of the boxwood made the comment “that looks just like the old sycamore over on Black River, you know the one with the rope swing, we really need to make a trip over there and take the kids”…
I have, since that experience, been very attentive to the people and their reactions at any showings and exhibits I have had the privilege to attend, as well as paying attention to the responses of those that have viewed my own collections…It seems to me the general non-bonsai-educated public appreciates and responds better to trees that they recognize, and trees that remind them of trees they see daily…My observations of the people as they looked at the different trees in the display, and the comments I heard that day had a definite impact on my second and third efforts of growing trees in pots…
Thanks again for these thoughts, and for bringing back some of the "experience of a lifetime" that has changed the way I view trees...
Regards
Behr
