Jluke33
Mame
Some background first. I'm coming out of about a decade long career in Music, and adopted practicing Bonsai as a new way to be creatively expressive in my life now that i'm not pursuing music. I'm obviously still quite Green but I already can't help but to start to see the parallels in learning between my previous artform and this one.
That being said, I was watching the Mirai channel on youtube (specifically the BSOP 2018 super critique) and noticed a tension that I think is often expressed here as well. bonsai craft vs. bonsai art. There's a point in the video where Ryan Neil disagrees with the other professionals who are critiquing an engleman spruce because it doesn't meet some particular nuts and bolts markers of "good bonsai" and he disagrees that these are issues with the tree but rather intentional features chosen by the artist (who I think he knows personally).
ANYway, it got me thinking. When I was learning songwriting in school, one of the foundational concepts we learned was called "tools not rules". The idea is that there are well worn paths and mechanisms for success in the artform. Many call these rules and live almost religiously by them. And, you can write a great song (or in our case) make an outstanding bonsai, if you master these mechanisms. However, mastering the mechanisms, however long it takes (and I suppose in any artform you never completly master even the basics) you still are not exactly being creatively expressive. It's only when you know (and can execute) the "rules" and can choose to employ them or not, that you are being creative and doing something new.
This is why the concept is called "tools not rules". or maybe more commonly "rules were meant to be broken" NOW, for someone like me, fresh off the boat, I probably have no business treating the "rules" like "tools" because i need to learn a thing or two before I can choose to go "outside the box". obvisouly one has to understand the mechanism and be able to execute it before being able to manipulate it.
I feel like this is how any and every artform evolves. Masters of the craft deciding to break the rules to make something new, still resting on the deep foundation of knowledge the craft brings. Anyway I have no particular jumping off point for discussion, and am more just in my head this morning thinking of all the ways that my new pursuit mirrors my old one.....
That being said, I was watching the Mirai channel on youtube (specifically the BSOP 2018 super critique) and noticed a tension that I think is often expressed here as well. bonsai craft vs. bonsai art. There's a point in the video where Ryan Neil disagrees with the other professionals who are critiquing an engleman spruce because it doesn't meet some particular nuts and bolts markers of "good bonsai" and he disagrees that these are issues with the tree but rather intentional features chosen by the artist (who I think he knows personally).
ANYway, it got me thinking. When I was learning songwriting in school, one of the foundational concepts we learned was called "tools not rules". The idea is that there are well worn paths and mechanisms for success in the artform. Many call these rules and live almost religiously by them. And, you can write a great song (or in our case) make an outstanding bonsai, if you master these mechanisms. However, mastering the mechanisms, however long it takes (and I suppose in any artform you never completly master even the basics) you still are not exactly being creatively expressive. It's only when you know (and can execute) the "rules" and can choose to employ them or not, that you are being creative and doing something new.
This is why the concept is called "tools not rules". or maybe more commonly "rules were meant to be broken" NOW, for someone like me, fresh off the boat, I probably have no business treating the "rules" like "tools" because i need to learn a thing or two before I can choose to go "outside the box". obvisouly one has to understand the mechanism and be able to execute it before being able to manipulate it.
I feel like this is how any and every artform evolves. Masters of the craft deciding to break the rules to make something new, still resting on the deep foundation of knowledge the craft brings. Anyway I have no particular jumping off point for discussion, and am more just in my head this morning thinking of all the ways that my new pursuit mirrors my old one.....
(not my SOLE income.. but the largest part of it, for sure.)
