The Bonsai Herald
Mame
From Peter Warren's facebook page:
"Making a statement about Bonsai, American or otherwise.
This is a long one. Get a cup of tea/coffee and bear with it.
In the lead up to the Artisans Cup, I was a little worried about if it would live up to the hype, if expectations were reached or would people come away from it feeling as thought it was just a load of marketing hype and bluster. This is mainly because I am a cynical Englishman and partially because I worry about the health and the now precarious financial situation of the insane man and his wife behind it. What can I say, I'm a sensitive soul beneath it all.
After the first glance from the entrance point, before I had even seen the trees, I knew it was going to exceed expectations and redefine what is possible with a bonsai exhibition as well as in some cases, push the boundaries of bonsai display. Now I dislike the use of hyperbole and marketing speak with a passion, we dress up the everyday to make it sound exciting. In adverts they talk about redefining the shaving experience...by adding yet another razor blade to more razor blades and charging more for it? What is wrong with one good blade, good soap and proper technique? Redefining gullibility is closer to the truth. However in this case, it was a genuine redefinition of what is possible, what can and should be done. It was neither throwing the baby out with the bath water revolutionary, nor was it the same old thing, reissued repackaged and re-evaluated (with an extra track and tacky badge).
Many of the actual displays were trees that had been seen before at various exhibitions across the nation. I knew at least 80% of the trees there, or at least I thought I did. The way in which they were exhibited was done in such a way as to bring the trees to life in a way that sterile fluorescent lighting and a row of tables could never do. The entire set up of the show was such that you were able, in fact subtly forced, to look at the trees from a number of possible angles and with light focused on certain areas, the interplay between light and shadow dancing across the trees put them in a whole different context. The clinical and hyper-critical nature of a traditional bonsai exhibition was lost and intimacy was created. The light, the shadow, the way in which the staging was arranged, the limited number of visitors allowed in at one time all created an intimacy that was unique and yet strangely familiar.
After the first viewing I left feeling spiritually enriched, both calmed and moved at the same time and this was despite the fact I was in the pressure situation of having to judge. Later on I was able to walk calmly through and felt even more enriched, noticing small details, taking in the bigger picture, relaxing and becoming immersed in the experience. The reason I felt this way was not by accident but by design.
I was fortunate to be able to listen in to the panel discussion by the design team behind the show involving the architects, the photographer and graphic designers. One of the Skylab team in particular was speaking about the creation of thresholds to leave the outside world behind, the leading of people along a path both physically and emotionally, allowing them to calm themselves before revealing something. It was at that moment that I realised why it seemed so familiar.
Now I want to make it so unequivocally clear here that I am not trying to take the conversation away from American and back to Japanese bonsai and any comparisons I make will be to the detriment of Japanese bonsai, nor am I trying to imply that any of this was deliberate because after discussion with the panel and knowing Ryan's desire to move away from "tradition", any mention of the word Japanese would have been "I don't want to be like a Japanese exhibition". I am 100% behind the desire to begin that move away from what we in the West think of as "Japanese tradition" and anybody who knows me will know that.
Why it seemed so familiar to me was that in essence, 72 tea room tokonoma had been created. The form was 100% modern and American but the essence was exactly the same as the Japanese and old. The fundamental goals of both were the same and without actively trying to copy the Japanese, the same end result had been achieved. That end result is to create an intimate space in which the viewer is allowed to connect on a deeper, more spiritual level with what is presented before them. This is done by very carefully controlling the way in which the object is viewed in terms of angle and lighting, by removing distractions and allowing the viewer to focus on the object. Every part of the experience from entering to leaving had thought put into it and a deeper meaning behind it and unless you are a complete blockhead, it was nigh on impossible to be unaffected by it. The level of connection between viewer and subject depends on the level of willingness to interact with an open mind; it depends on the level of cognitive bias in the viewer. Some in the bonsai community wanted the exhibition to fail no matter what and so either viewed the show or the photographs online with a very skewed personal perspective. More on that in a completely different post however.
Viewing each tree from the slightly skewed physical perspective in the exhibition, as they were arranged not lined up one after the other, but at angles was a stroke of absolute genius. This is something that used to be done way back in the day, if you look at early Kokufu books and Meiji/Taisho (pre 1926) displays, then you see trees displayed with the pots all crooked, you see trees on stands in tokonoma at a 35 degree angle to the front. Now anyone who has had the misfortune of sitting through an exhibition critique of mine will have heard me bang on about the laziness of people who display and their trees are not centred on the table or parallel to the table edge. 2 degrees off parallel or 15mm off centre is not an artistic decision, that is sheer lack of care. Placing a tree deliberately at an angle in the display is perfectly acceptable in my book. Placing the tree on a stand deliberately off centre is perfectly acceptable in my book. That is an artistic decision to show the tree off in a certain way. It is very difficult to execute successfully and requires a very well styled tree, but when done properly, it makes the experience far richer than just standing exactly square in front of the tree at the prescribed and precise front. Too often trees are styled so they look beautiful in photographs but they look like absolute ass in real life, lacking three dimensional depth. Branches bent unnaturally to make the view from the front look great but the view from 5 degrees off the prescribed front looks fake and artificial. One of the lessons that The Chief taught me which resonates to this day is that "A true masterpiece has no front". We were talking about a juniper that had just come into the garden and five of us couldn't come up with our favourite front, it just looked superb from every possible angle. There were places it certainly looked better than others, but it didn't need to hide anything, nor show anything off, it had no faults, no need to shout. It was pure bonsai, old school, classical, timeless.
The layout of the staging allowed the viewer to look at the trees from a number of different angles, interact with them from the side and not just the front. The winning tree for example started to draw you in from 15 feet away, a monster of a tree which looked superb and had movement in every face and direction. Another tree that did this was the Buttonwood from Michael Feduccia, a tree which for me has no front, there is no one single point which defines that tree and that is what makes it so special. The staging allowed you to view it from various angles, I found my eyes became transfixed to the tree, and my body moved independently, guided into the space around it whilst my gaze lingered on the movement of the trunk, the space between the branches and contrasting patches of light and shadow. I was allowed to connect with the tree and I saw it in a different way to the last time I saw it in Michael's garden. Is that not the purpose of a bonsai exhibition?
One question I wanted to ask the panel, particularly Skylab, but also the photographer, was "What for you defines how you view a tree?". We in the bonsai community have a rigid view of the front of a tree, we stick chopsticks or wire in our training pot and we never deviate from looking at the tree when styling it from that one specific view point. On the rare occasion I do demonstrations, I deliberately do not say, "this is the front", always waiting for one person in the audience to ask "where is the front", to which I reply, "it's there or thereabouts", pointing vaguely in the general direction of where I think the front will end up. Think about how you look at trees in your garden or at an exhibition and consider how often you sit at the exact front. I'm not saying trees do not have their best face, but a genuinely good tree, a superb bonsai is structured so that it looks good from a number of different view points. The branch structure looks natural and unaffected.
I had a brief conversation with Chris Hornbecker, the photographer who was also responsible for the individual lighting on each of the trees, a task that went on through the night and ended at 7am just before I started my judging. This dedication to the task was one of the reasons that it was so successful, as well as the planning, forethought and intuitive understanding of light and shadow of an incredibly talented photographer. I was able to ask if him if he had ever read the book "In praise of shadows" by Tanizaki which is a bit of a typically Japanese patriotic puff piece, but holds a lot of truth about the importance of light and shadow in traditional Japanese architecture and aesthetics. He said "No". That was the answer I was hoping for.
Along with the layout of the entrance, where the viewer is invited to stop and read panels hinting at the meaning of bonsai and the show, (I'm thinking thinking tea garden design here) the lighting was the key point that drew my attention to the similar lines of design between 16th Century Japanese tea room architecture and the exhibition. Tea ceremony rooms and the gardens surrounding them were designed specifically to allow light through in a certain way and in specific directions. Tea ceremonies were timed so that the light fell onto the display in just the correct way so that it illuminated it to the desired effect, and over the course of the tea ceremony and as the viewers eyes adjusted to the darkened room and the light source subtly shifted, they started to see the object in a different way, it revealed to them things previously hidden. Textures, details and colours in scrolls, flowers or incense burners that would be lost in direct sunlight were vivid and distinct, but they were fleeting and ephemeral, only visible for as long as the light was, and the viewer was in a certain state of mind.
So the question is why did I draw those conclusions and why did those factors resonate so strongly on a personal level? Why did I see those similarities in the design when they were actively trying not to be Japanese? The reason in my mind is that both designs had exactly the same purpose. This is what interests me most about life in general, getting to the truth of the nature of something. Seeing more than just the physical in front of our eyes, but considering what is beyond.
The whole point of the tea ceremony was to examine the true nature of the objects on display and by doing that, it allows the viewer to contemplate the complexity of human existence on a deeper level.
The whole point of the Artisans Cup (in my opinion) was to allow the viewer to examine the true nature of American bonsai, explore what other people are doing, what is possible and to contemplate the complexity of human existence on a deeper level.
Much of this is done on the subconscious level, it doesn't work if you walk around with a running commentary in your head, "ok, now I am looking at this juniper and contemplating the struggle it has gone through, yes, it has struggled, hmm very tough life, now I am considering...what is it I am supposed to be considering on my checklist of mindfulness? Oh yeah, the ever changing nature of human existence in the fall colours of that maple, but that accent is way too big for that tree..." It is something that should be felt on a less conscious level, it leaves us with a feeling of that we can't quite put our finger on but later on, maybe weeks after we remember and it dawns on us. For some it was more immediate, there were people in tears at the Artisans Cup, so if we define art as something that is supposed to elicit an emotional or intellectual response, then the argument has been settled.
This however, is the struggle that we face with bonsai in the West, it is an art of subtlety and feeling within a relatively narrow subject matter rather than say painting or sculpture where explicitness and boldness is possible. It requires a deeper engagement than looking at something and saying "hey, its cool" and pushing the like button, even with (or perhaps, especially) the Hoover tree. In the modern world this idea is hard to comprehend, when we live in a society of materialism, instant gratification and short attention span.
In order to genuinely examine the true nature of something as a viewer, the environment around it must be created to allow that deeper, subtle engagement. This is what was done with both 16th century tea ceremony rooms and the Artisans Cup. Modern Japanese and Western bonsai exhibitions fail extraordinarily to do that. This is not a criticism of the West, but a criticism of the Japanese. They defined modern bonsai exhibitions and frankly they bore the shit out of me. Kokufu is the biggest let down every year. I get excited for about an hour and thats about it. From a technical perspective and looking at beautiful trees it is the best in the world without question, but it leaves me feeling spiritually unfulfilled. The last time I felt anything was at the Genkoukai, a very small exhibition of mainly suiseki displayed in one of the sub temples of Daitokuji in Kyoto. It wasn't so much the objects that were on display but the environment, the atmosphere that was created, not just by the temple but by the participants and the very small number of quietly enthusiastic people viewing. It left me feeling as though, this is the reason my life has taken the path it has taken. The same feeling I got running around Yosemite like a Sasquatch.
Bonsai is not a medium that works well in two dimensions and the Artisans Cup is a perfect example of this. In photographs and online, we look only at form and not substance, a feeling was created that cannot be gleaned from photographs. It is worth noting that many of the negative responses were from people who weren't there. Now boys (for its mainly boys), I may look at a lot of pictures of Penelope Cruz on my ipad, but I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like to look at her in real life and in differing light, from different angles, to see how she moves and what she smells like. I don't feel qualified to pass judgement on her.
Those same boys will instantly dismiss this as nonsense, reading too much into what was just some bonsai exhibition by someone too big for their boots, judged by puppets and rigged from the start to excluded them. A piece written to defend or blow smoke up the ass of my friend/colleague/lover/idol/business partner/puppet master (delete as you see fit), but to them I bite both of my thumbs and say grow up. We all do bonsai for different reasons, I do it so that it will help me to understand the universe and the nature of human existence. It is a strange way of achieving that understanding, but I find it easier to understand than quantum mechanics (which also has parallels with bonsai). This essay/stream of consciousness is just a way of helping me towards that goal and yes, it is an unashamed love letter to the creative team, exhibitors and volunteers who made the Artisans Cup happen, it enabled me to reconnect with bonsai and fall in love again and for that I say thank you. I hope it is of some use, a few people asked me at the cup why I didn't write any more blog posts or anything and that I should expand on the point I made in the discussion, so blame them. This was my experience of the Cup.
So in conclusion. The Artisans Cup was an experience, it showed you the true nature of bonsai if you wanted it to, or it was just a cool show of some awesome trees in the dark displayed in a weird way dude. What next? Thats up to everyone else. I know what I want to do...
This is actually supposed to be a blog post, but I can't log on for some reason. Security and all that. It will be up there at some point. Bit long for facebook."
Source: https://www.facebook.com/Saruyama-Bonsai-314362778658518/
"Making a statement about Bonsai, American or otherwise.
This is a long one. Get a cup of tea/coffee and bear with it.
In the lead up to the Artisans Cup, I was a little worried about if it would live up to the hype, if expectations were reached or would people come away from it feeling as thought it was just a load of marketing hype and bluster. This is mainly because I am a cynical Englishman and partially because I worry about the health and the now precarious financial situation of the insane man and his wife behind it. What can I say, I'm a sensitive soul beneath it all.
After the first glance from the entrance point, before I had even seen the trees, I knew it was going to exceed expectations and redefine what is possible with a bonsai exhibition as well as in some cases, push the boundaries of bonsai display. Now I dislike the use of hyperbole and marketing speak with a passion, we dress up the everyday to make it sound exciting. In adverts they talk about redefining the shaving experience...by adding yet another razor blade to more razor blades and charging more for it? What is wrong with one good blade, good soap and proper technique? Redefining gullibility is closer to the truth. However in this case, it was a genuine redefinition of what is possible, what can and should be done. It was neither throwing the baby out with the bath water revolutionary, nor was it the same old thing, reissued repackaged and re-evaluated (with an extra track and tacky badge).
Many of the actual displays were trees that had been seen before at various exhibitions across the nation. I knew at least 80% of the trees there, or at least I thought I did. The way in which they were exhibited was done in such a way as to bring the trees to life in a way that sterile fluorescent lighting and a row of tables could never do. The entire set up of the show was such that you were able, in fact subtly forced, to look at the trees from a number of possible angles and with light focused on certain areas, the interplay between light and shadow dancing across the trees put them in a whole different context. The clinical and hyper-critical nature of a traditional bonsai exhibition was lost and intimacy was created. The light, the shadow, the way in which the staging was arranged, the limited number of visitors allowed in at one time all created an intimacy that was unique and yet strangely familiar.
After the first viewing I left feeling spiritually enriched, both calmed and moved at the same time and this was despite the fact I was in the pressure situation of having to judge. Later on I was able to walk calmly through and felt even more enriched, noticing small details, taking in the bigger picture, relaxing and becoming immersed in the experience. The reason I felt this way was not by accident but by design.
I was fortunate to be able to listen in to the panel discussion by the design team behind the show involving the architects, the photographer and graphic designers. One of the Skylab team in particular was speaking about the creation of thresholds to leave the outside world behind, the leading of people along a path both physically and emotionally, allowing them to calm themselves before revealing something. It was at that moment that I realised why it seemed so familiar.
Now I want to make it so unequivocally clear here that I am not trying to take the conversation away from American and back to Japanese bonsai and any comparisons I make will be to the detriment of Japanese bonsai, nor am I trying to imply that any of this was deliberate because after discussion with the panel and knowing Ryan's desire to move away from "tradition", any mention of the word Japanese would have been "I don't want to be like a Japanese exhibition". I am 100% behind the desire to begin that move away from what we in the West think of as "Japanese tradition" and anybody who knows me will know that.
Why it seemed so familiar to me was that in essence, 72 tea room tokonoma had been created. The form was 100% modern and American but the essence was exactly the same as the Japanese and old. The fundamental goals of both were the same and without actively trying to copy the Japanese, the same end result had been achieved. That end result is to create an intimate space in which the viewer is allowed to connect on a deeper, more spiritual level with what is presented before them. This is done by very carefully controlling the way in which the object is viewed in terms of angle and lighting, by removing distractions and allowing the viewer to focus on the object. Every part of the experience from entering to leaving had thought put into it and a deeper meaning behind it and unless you are a complete blockhead, it was nigh on impossible to be unaffected by it. The level of connection between viewer and subject depends on the level of willingness to interact with an open mind; it depends on the level of cognitive bias in the viewer. Some in the bonsai community wanted the exhibition to fail no matter what and so either viewed the show or the photographs online with a very skewed personal perspective. More on that in a completely different post however.
Viewing each tree from the slightly skewed physical perspective in the exhibition, as they were arranged not lined up one after the other, but at angles was a stroke of absolute genius. This is something that used to be done way back in the day, if you look at early Kokufu books and Meiji/Taisho (pre 1926) displays, then you see trees displayed with the pots all crooked, you see trees on stands in tokonoma at a 35 degree angle to the front. Now anyone who has had the misfortune of sitting through an exhibition critique of mine will have heard me bang on about the laziness of people who display and their trees are not centred on the table or parallel to the table edge. 2 degrees off parallel or 15mm off centre is not an artistic decision, that is sheer lack of care. Placing a tree deliberately at an angle in the display is perfectly acceptable in my book. Placing the tree on a stand deliberately off centre is perfectly acceptable in my book. That is an artistic decision to show the tree off in a certain way. It is very difficult to execute successfully and requires a very well styled tree, but when done properly, it makes the experience far richer than just standing exactly square in front of the tree at the prescribed and precise front. Too often trees are styled so they look beautiful in photographs but they look like absolute ass in real life, lacking three dimensional depth. Branches bent unnaturally to make the view from the front look great but the view from 5 degrees off the prescribed front looks fake and artificial. One of the lessons that The Chief taught me which resonates to this day is that "A true masterpiece has no front". We were talking about a juniper that had just come into the garden and five of us couldn't come up with our favourite front, it just looked superb from every possible angle. There were places it certainly looked better than others, but it didn't need to hide anything, nor show anything off, it had no faults, no need to shout. It was pure bonsai, old school, classical, timeless.
The layout of the staging allowed the viewer to look at the trees from a number of different angles, interact with them from the side and not just the front. The winning tree for example started to draw you in from 15 feet away, a monster of a tree which looked superb and had movement in every face and direction. Another tree that did this was the Buttonwood from Michael Feduccia, a tree which for me has no front, there is no one single point which defines that tree and that is what makes it so special. The staging allowed you to view it from various angles, I found my eyes became transfixed to the tree, and my body moved independently, guided into the space around it whilst my gaze lingered on the movement of the trunk, the space between the branches and contrasting patches of light and shadow. I was allowed to connect with the tree and I saw it in a different way to the last time I saw it in Michael's garden. Is that not the purpose of a bonsai exhibition?
One question I wanted to ask the panel, particularly Skylab, but also the photographer, was "What for you defines how you view a tree?". We in the bonsai community have a rigid view of the front of a tree, we stick chopsticks or wire in our training pot and we never deviate from looking at the tree when styling it from that one specific view point. On the rare occasion I do demonstrations, I deliberately do not say, "this is the front", always waiting for one person in the audience to ask "where is the front", to which I reply, "it's there or thereabouts", pointing vaguely in the general direction of where I think the front will end up. Think about how you look at trees in your garden or at an exhibition and consider how often you sit at the exact front. I'm not saying trees do not have their best face, but a genuinely good tree, a superb bonsai is structured so that it looks good from a number of different view points. The branch structure looks natural and unaffected.
I had a brief conversation with Chris Hornbecker, the photographer who was also responsible for the individual lighting on each of the trees, a task that went on through the night and ended at 7am just before I started my judging. This dedication to the task was one of the reasons that it was so successful, as well as the planning, forethought and intuitive understanding of light and shadow of an incredibly talented photographer. I was able to ask if him if he had ever read the book "In praise of shadows" by Tanizaki which is a bit of a typically Japanese patriotic puff piece, but holds a lot of truth about the importance of light and shadow in traditional Japanese architecture and aesthetics. He said "No". That was the answer I was hoping for.
Along with the layout of the entrance, where the viewer is invited to stop and read panels hinting at the meaning of bonsai and the show, (I'm thinking thinking tea garden design here) the lighting was the key point that drew my attention to the similar lines of design between 16th Century Japanese tea room architecture and the exhibition. Tea ceremony rooms and the gardens surrounding them were designed specifically to allow light through in a certain way and in specific directions. Tea ceremonies were timed so that the light fell onto the display in just the correct way so that it illuminated it to the desired effect, and over the course of the tea ceremony and as the viewers eyes adjusted to the darkened room and the light source subtly shifted, they started to see the object in a different way, it revealed to them things previously hidden. Textures, details and colours in scrolls, flowers or incense burners that would be lost in direct sunlight were vivid and distinct, but they were fleeting and ephemeral, only visible for as long as the light was, and the viewer was in a certain state of mind.
So the question is why did I draw those conclusions and why did those factors resonate so strongly on a personal level? Why did I see those similarities in the design when they were actively trying not to be Japanese? The reason in my mind is that both designs had exactly the same purpose. This is what interests me most about life in general, getting to the truth of the nature of something. Seeing more than just the physical in front of our eyes, but considering what is beyond.
The whole point of the tea ceremony was to examine the true nature of the objects on display and by doing that, it allows the viewer to contemplate the complexity of human existence on a deeper level.
The whole point of the Artisans Cup (in my opinion) was to allow the viewer to examine the true nature of American bonsai, explore what other people are doing, what is possible and to contemplate the complexity of human existence on a deeper level.
Much of this is done on the subconscious level, it doesn't work if you walk around with a running commentary in your head, "ok, now I am looking at this juniper and contemplating the struggle it has gone through, yes, it has struggled, hmm very tough life, now I am considering...what is it I am supposed to be considering on my checklist of mindfulness? Oh yeah, the ever changing nature of human existence in the fall colours of that maple, but that accent is way too big for that tree..." It is something that should be felt on a less conscious level, it leaves us with a feeling of that we can't quite put our finger on but later on, maybe weeks after we remember and it dawns on us. For some it was more immediate, there were people in tears at the Artisans Cup, so if we define art as something that is supposed to elicit an emotional or intellectual response, then the argument has been settled.
This however, is the struggle that we face with bonsai in the West, it is an art of subtlety and feeling within a relatively narrow subject matter rather than say painting or sculpture where explicitness and boldness is possible. It requires a deeper engagement than looking at something and saying "hey, its cool" and pushing the like button, even with (or perhaps, especially) the Hoover tree. In the modern world this idea is hard to comprehend, when we live in a society of materialism, instant gratification and short attention span.
In order to genuinely examine the true nature of something as a viewer, the environment around it must be created to allow that deeper, subtle engagement. This is what was done with both 16th century tea ceremony rooms and the Artisans Cup. Modern Japanese and Western bonsai exhibitions fail extraordinarily to do that. This is not a criticism of the West, but a criticism of the Japanese. They defined modern bonsai exhibitions and frankly they bore the shit out of me. Kokufu is the biggest let down every year. I get excited for about an hour and thats about it. From a technical perspective and looking at beautiful trees it is the best in the world without question, but it leaves me feeling spiritually unfulfilled. The last time I felt anything was at the Genkoukai, a very small exhibition of mainly suiseki displayed in one of the sub temples of Daitokuji in Kyoto. It wasn't so much the objects that were on display but the environment, the atmosphere that was created, not just by the temple but by the participants and the very small number of quietly enthusiastic people viewing. It left me feeling as though, this is the reason my life has taken the path it has taken. The same feeling I got running around Yosemite like a Sasquatch.
Bonsai is not a medium that works well in two dimensions and the Artisans Cup is a perfect example of this. In photographs and online, we look only at form and not substance, a feeling was created that cannot be gleaned from photographs. It is worth noting that many of the negative responses were from people who weren't there. Now boys (for its mainly boys), I may look at a lot of pictures of Penelope Cruz on my ipad, but I can't even begin to imagine what it must be like to look at her in real life and in differing light, from different angles, to see how she moves and what she smells like. I don't feel qualified to pass judgement on her.
Those same boys will instantly dismiss this as nonsense, reading too much into what was just some bonsai exhibition by someone too big for their boots, judged by puppets and rigged from the start to excluded them. A piece written to defend or blow smoke up the ass of my friend/colleague/lover/idol/business partner/puppet master (delete as you see fit), but to them I bite both of my thumbs and say grow up. We all do bonsai for different reasons, I do it so that it will help me to understand the universe and the nature of human existence. It is a strange way of achieving that understanding, but I find it easier to understand than quantum mechanics (which also has parallels with bonsai). This essay/stream of consciousness is just a way of helping me towards that goal and yes, it is an unashamed love letter to the creative team, exhibitors and volunteers who made the Artisans Cup happen, it enabled me to reconnect with bonsai and fall in love again and for that I say thank you. I hope it is of some use, a few people asked me at the cup why I didn't write any more blog posts or anything and that I should expand on the point I made in the discussion, so blame them. This was my experience of the Cup.
So in conclusion. The Artisans Cup was an experience, it showed you the true nature of bonsai if you wanted it to, or it was just a cool show of some awesome trees in the dark displayed in a weird way dude. What next? Thats up to everyone else. I know what I want to do...
This is actually supposed to be a blog post, but I can't log on for some reason. Security and all that. It will be up there at some point. Bit long for facebook."
Source: https://www.facebook.com/Saruyama-Bonsai-314362778658518/
