AusBonsai

I went to the Bonsai After Dark session of Bonsai Reshaped at the NBPCA on Friday 24 March. A good night. Below are some photos of the demonstration trees.

Atlas cedar (Cedrus atlantica) before and after trimming by Australian bonsai artist, Sam Thompson.

Japanese red pine (Pinus densiflora) before, during and after trimming by Slovenian bonsai artist, Nik Rozman

Hmmm. Wrong photo. Try this as the JRP being styled.

the styling of that red pine gives me anxiety... a little piece of me just died inside.

It may not quell your anxiety, KCandR, but you might like to know that the branch intended to be the apex broke when being bent upwards. Nik warned us that he was taking a risk. The break meant he had to improvise.

Phil Rabl wrote: ↑March 27th, 2023, 8:28 pm the branch intended to be the apex broke when being bent upwards. Nik warned us that he was taking a risk.

Was the risk worth it? Could those beautiful cascading branch lines not be utilised somewhat? (other than laying them on the floor)

It is easy to sit back in a chair and make judgements based off a few photos, and as such I intend no disrespect to Nik, however I have similar feelings to KCAR. What looked to be interesting, although challenging, material was turned into something relatively formulaic and uninteresting.

Having said that though, I was not there, and would love to know if Nik gave reasoning behind his styling decisions and what his vision for its future was? It looked like it may have been a cascading cultivar and I wondered if he was setting it up somehow to show this off in the future?

Another point of some (potential) relevance is that Nik bound the branches he bent with tape that looked like duct tape. Maybe the tape didn't provide enough support and that raffia may have prevented the break. No way of knowing, but it's timely to remember that really good binding is essential if you're doing a big bend.

It is what it is I guess, easy to sit and critique but once something critical snaps you can find your options severely limited in terms of what you can rescue.

I often malign Ryan Neil for liking the sound his own voice a bit too much, but something I took from one of the videos I watched talking about a time he broke a branch on a specimen Red Pine while helping Kimura to wire it was Kimura telling him “pretend the branch never existed and make a better tree” and if the best possible tree was that then good on him for salvaging what must have been a pretty terrible experience in front of a crowd