San Diego Bonsai Club

Joanie

This is the thread where we can always add events and comments about the San Diego Club. For information, the club meets on the second Sunday of every month in Balboa Park, at the Prado. Meetings are from 9 to 12 or so, and potluck follows. There is always a raffle at the regular club meetings, as well as at least one demonstration and/or lecture. It is a very active, vital club with over 300 members. The website is here but may not be updated regularly.

Our next meeting on November 13th, 2005 will feature the spectacular Marco Invernizzi from Italy. What a thrill! And of course many of us will be at the Golden State Bonsai Federation Convention from November 2nd to 6th, 2005 in Anaheim, CA. The website for the convention is here.

Please add your comments, questions, and interesting tidbits to this thread!

Joanie

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Joanie

A reminder about our next club meeting, this coming Sunday. Headliner is Marco Invernizzi, with both a demo and a "bring your own tree". The Intermediate demonstration will be our own Migoto showing us how to draw a bonsai!

As usual, raffle and potluck, and our elections as well. Promises to be a very full morning.

Hope to see you all there!

Joanie

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Joanie

Our club meeting was today, and we were delighted with Michelle's (Migoto's) drawing demo. She brought artist's pencils, paper, and clipboards for all of us, and a very nice little handout with examples of tree drawings. She stood up front with a big pad of paper and gave us some exercises and insights gained from her art school education. She explained, in very simple and friendly terms, how to go from a line drawing to a 3-D tree including finding the gesture and movement, going from simple to detailed, how to draw foliage, how to shadow, etc. Her insights and suggestions for how to "see" a bonsai and then draw it helped open the doors for people who wouldn't ordinarily know where to start. Good job Michelle!!

Then Marco Invernizzi demonstrated with a very nice garden juniper. He was very funny and we enjoyed listening and watching as he warmed the audience up with his wit and style. He encouraged us to come closer to the demo, to stand behind him or beside him or in front of him, but no one did until the detailed work started. (Americans are just that kind of crowd, Marco! We tend not to get up close and personal.) But we did thoroughly absorb the lessons he was giving, and we were fascinated by the wrapping of raffia to bend the large apical branch back and down, into position, using guy wires. There were only a few gasps as he removed foliage from the entire right hand (viewers right) of the tree.... to make a lovely deadwood composition and balance the movement to the left in a han-kengai form. My only wish was that more of his expertise could have been shown, if the tree had been prepped more beforehand. He spent a lot of time talking about very basic bonsai philosophy, gesture and movement, and how to prune branches for backbudding, etc. Which left very little time (in this club format) for the techniques for which he is very well and deservedly known. We could have skipped a lot of the basics because we have plenty of people competent to teach them, an expert of the caliber of Marco should have been given the ability to really show what he could do! Then, after the demo and lunch, he worked with ten lucky people on stock junipers. We didn't stay for that, we had other commitments, but no doubt he was a resounding success!

Next meeting is our holiday party and charity event. We donate unwrapped toys (or money) to a charity that gives them to children removed from their homes due to abuse. Last year, apparently, two truckloads of toys were donated. And we play the White Elephant game too. Fun!

Joanie

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robert1955

Yes Joanie, it was a fantastic meeting. It was refreshing to see someone so young and talented to give us our demo. And yes, very witty, nothing stuffy about him.

This is a fun hobby and he made it fun.

Peace
Bob

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The older you get, the older old is.

Bonsainut

I'm worn out. That's about all the bonsai one nut can handle in two weeks stretch. Now to face my own hoarde of angry under maintained trees. oof


Any volunteer as an apprentice??

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Lethal Use of Farce

Attila

Hey Nut,

It was really nice to meet you at the convention. I expected an old, short and skinny guy. I am still trying to get over the rude awakening, sometimes waking up at night in cold sweat..

Bonsainut

Hey Attila,
I've ofter said I was the biggest name in Bonsai. For the rest of your mental pictures thats 6 foot 5, 395.

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Keep growing,---'Nut



Lethal Use of Farce

Joanie

Today is a work day for our club.... we go to the San Diego Wild Animal Park and work on the Bonsai Pavilion collection. I haven't yet made it to a work day, so today will be a lot of fun! I'll take tons of pictures and show you all what our pavilion and our workers look like on this hot, windy November day.

If anyone from the club wants to come to the work days, you have to get on a list to be let into the Wild Animal Park for free, through the back gate. You work from 9 am to noon, with refreshments, and then you are free to wander the park.

So, back with pictures later!

Joanie

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Joanie

It was a lovely, relaxing morning at the Wild Animal Park. Although it is quite warm this week, under the shade cloth it was cool and pleasant. The group that comes regularly knows what to do, and there were three newcomers... a guy named Chris, his wife Jill, and myself. Steve Valentine, the curator, welcomed us and gave us the "fifty cent tour". Then we grabbed buckets for debris, and started in.

The Pavilion is toward the back of the park, and on high ground. It's quiet, you can't hear the lions roar or the tram go by. At times, the only sound was the crunch of gravel and the quiet comments passed between some of the workers. We would look at each pot, pull any little weeds, pick up leaves, pull off dead leaves or brown needles, check for bugs, etc. The more experienced people trim the trees, rewire, and evaluate them more closely. There is an area in the middle, with a dry stone stream, gravel, and azaleas. That needed weeding, too, and Jill and I spent some time going through that.

Steve opened the shed and began to show me the pots in storage. We spent some time looking at the pots, he would tell me what merit the pot had, where he got it, and the quality of the pot. We looked for little signs of workmanship... I noticed a pot that had a very rough, groggy interior but a smooth exterior. It had little chips out of it, but they weren't in places that you would expect chips. I told Steve that I suspected that the pot had been made of the rough clay and then an engobe had been applied before it was fired. An engobe of finer clay applied in this way would make a "skin" that would make the pot seem of a higher quality than it really was. Steve agreed, and showed me another pot in the collection with the same suspicious areas. The pot is Japanese, and rather old, but you could tell that the quality was low.

Anyway, it was a pleasure to handle the old pots and be told their stories. Learning the nuance of pots is something that is going to take time! He had some lovely old glazed pots, too, and handling them was a joy.

Below, a view of one side of the pavilion, (the light is fairly early morning, the sun is just over the ridge); then Dave Woodall and Steve Valentine discussing a juniper; and Alan working on a pine.

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