Shinji Critique #1 - Shohin Display

Jay

Nice grouping, why all round pots?

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A Bonsai student living with his trees at N 44.37 W 77.49...
Think before you act... then think again... no good comes from rushing

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Ralph

Excellent display! Who is the carpenter? The display is detracted from, because of the background.

capobianco

Great stand! Great stone! Not thrilled with the arrangement. Juniper on top looks ragged,needs more pruing. Trident looks lopsided and off balance. Boxwood has too much groundcover. Bottom juniper has too many branches that look like the spokes of a wagon wheel. Needs work.

Lesley

This is a beautiful display. Great trees as usual, I think that the Trident Maple trunk should have more taper in this phot it appears telephone pole-like. The apex on the boxwood could be higher? Lesley

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Ladybug

Carl_Bergstrom

DISCLAIMER: I do not feel that I have put in the hours of study
necessary to be qualified to engage in formal critique of bonsai
displays. Nonetheless, for the purposes of this contest I will attempt
to offer a few impressions.

I'll go out on a limb and assert that this is an absolutely beautiful
stand exhibiting exquisite craftmanship (artistry?).

I'll also collect my free point and claim that the pots should not all
be round. This gets at the general issue of variation; I feel that
the two shimpaku junipers, with their very similar pots, are much too
similar to occupy the central places of this five-object dispaly.

With respect to composition, I think that the selection and placement
of trees and stands could be improved in a number of ways.

First, I dislike the choice of four bonsai here. Three and an accent
plant, or even three and one empty shelf, would be preferred. Not so
much because of any superstition associationed with the number four,
but rather because of the compsitional stasis of four objects arranged
in this manner. The trees do exhibit a good communication among
themselves; their lines of movement lead the eye from one to the next
to the next (albeit stalling somewhat on the boxwood, which does not
have suffient rightward movement to counter the strong leftward
movement of the trident and semi-cascade.)

Second, the trees and other objects should be placed in a fashion
suggestive of their natural growth habits. I would like to see the
high-mountain trees (the shimpaku junipers) placed high, and the
meadow trees (the boxwood and the trident) placed below. The
near-mountain waterfall stone needs to be on or near the top of the
display.

Third, while I have no problem with the stand-within-a-stand
composition, the daiza of the stone gives you a
stand-upon-a-stand-within-a-stand, with seems one layer to many. I'd
prefer the daiza without the intermediate stand. The powerful trident
might also be OK without its stand. While it is good to have some of
the objects without stands, the semi-cascade, one of the strongest
candidates FOR a stand, is the one object that goes without in this
display.

Fourth, the objects are slightly too big for the stand. I'd prefer to
see them less able to dominant the visual mass of each display
area. The suiseki and the cascade are particularly noticable in this
way. Removing the stand (see above) from beneath the daiza would help
in this regard.

Finally, I would prefer some indication of season. There is a
distribing genereicity to this arragement. The season could be, but
need not be, autumn or winter. While golden leaves or bare branches
would be one pleasing direction, spring blooms on an accent (but then
no autumn or winter images!) would be a perfectly reasonable
alternative.

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In love with trees