GSBF Convention Pictures?

Attila Soos

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I don't know the story of this tree - but I'm sure someone here does. I saw Harry at the show and I should have asked him. There is that one tiny live vein that runs all the way up that magnificent deadwood. He may just be letting it go to strengthen it?

Had you asked him, he would have just said "Yeah...Yeah" before walking away. He has no patience for youngsters teaching him about his trees.
If I was 95, I would probably be the same. If you ask Harry, life is too short to waste it on wiring.

But if you think about that tree though, it looks like a small tree growing on a ledge. It's a landscape from a distant view, so, it is fine the way it is. The deadwood is not supposed to be part of the tree. It is the ledge that supports the tree.;)

Harry has a few trees that are just too priceless to belong to any individual, when Harry decides that it's too much for him to care for them. They will probably end up in one of the major public collections, here in California. Hopefully, the Huntington, close to my house.
 
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Attila Soos

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When walking in the exhibition room, I noticed one interesting thing. It was about the accent plants. A discussion was going on between some of the older members of the California Bonsai Society (sorry, no names here), but they all agreed that 90% of the accent plants were totally wrong. Mostly the stands on which the accent plants were placed: too formal, wrong shape, etc, etc. The best compliment was given to Roy Nagatoshi's shimpaku display: it had no accent plant, so nothing was wrong with the accent plant on that one.:D

It seems like we give little thought to their purpose and the influence on the display. We just display them because "they look nice".
Personally, I am not sure that I care too much.
 
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Ang3lfir3

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Had you asked him, he would have just said "Yeah...Yeah" before walking away. He has no patience for youngsters teaching him about his trees.
If I was 95, I would probably be the same. If you ask Harry, life is too short to waste it on wiring.

which is why I said I am prolly not supposed to say that ... interesting that I never saw that image until you mentioned it.... now the tree is so much more special than it ever was....
 

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Had you asked him, he would have just said "Yeah...Yeah" before walking away. He has no patience for youngsters teaching him about his trees.

LOL - I would never try to teach him. I would ask that he teach me :) He has that tree like that for a reason. I would want him to share it with me :)
 

Attila Soos

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which is why I said I am prolly not supposed to say that ... interesting that I never saw that image until you mentioned it.... now the tree is so much more special than it ever was....

Also, if you look at the straight trunk of the "little tree", it is consistent with the round and compact crown. The straight little trunk could never be part of the large and contorted real trunk, which plays the role of a landscape formation.

I think Robert Steven called this type of image a "surrealistic bonsai". The more common forms are in the raft style, where the large horizontal trunk is the landscape and the branches become part of a grove of trees. It is very unusual to see it on a California Juniper. So, I think that whoever inherits this tree, should leave it the way it is (aside from small adjustments that reinforce the image, and subsequent maintenance), out of respect to the unusual design and probably also historical significance. There are things in life that should not be improved (such as the tower of Pisa in Italy, or the Beaux-Arts style buildings next to my office, here in downton Los Angeles), and this tree may be one of them.
 
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rockm

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I've only seen harry Hirao once, at the last Potomac Bonsai Association show at the National Arboretum. He was re-styling one of the more famous trees in that collection--the 'oh my Gawd" tree. I think Harry is a fan of surrealistic trunks and small apexes (apices, whatever they're called in plural)
http://www.bonsai-nbf.org/site/north_american.html
The OMG tree is in the second set of photos, fifth from the left

It has many of the same characteristics as the one posted here. Harry collected both. He said he found the OMG tree AS IT IS standing on a hillside. He said he did nothing to alter the deadwood, no carving or shaping. He did wire the apex--but only a little--certainly nothing close to what is done on most trees. It is surrealistic and the National Arb staff informally named it the OMG tree because that's what most people say when they see it and realize that it is alive.
He said there wasn't much to do to the tree beyond what nature had already done.
 

Attila Soos

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It is surrealistic and the National Arb staff informally named it the OMG tree because that's what most people say when they see it and realize that it is alive.
He said there wasn't much to do to the tree beyond what nature had already done.

Yeah, Harry certainly has his own ideas about these junipers, and those ideas are definitely not of the mainstream. He is also very enigmatic about them, talking was never his thing.
 

Attila Soos

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Come to think of it, everybody talks about Kimura and his "modern sculptures", while Harry has been doing his Henry Moore impersonations secretly, in broad daylight, for three quarters of a century. And he doesn't even own a chainsaw.

Whether like him or not, Harry is the counter-point of John Naka. If Naka is the yin, Harry is the yang. He doesn't design his bonsai like ordinary trees, and he does not want the birds to fly through them. It was not an accident that I mentioned Henry Moore above.
 
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