Smoke
Ignore-Amus
Is this thread just about California artists ?
keep it green,
Harry
No not at all, but I think it sheds a lot a light on why California has such a great bonsai culture.
First of all California has a long history of bonsai dateing back to 1917.
Second, many of the old gaurd bonsai advocates that traveled the nation spreading the word of bonsai came from California.
Third, California contained the largest concentration of Asian Americans that came here from Japan with a background in the bonsai arts.
Fourth, due to bigotry after the war, it was these Asian Americans that migrated to loves of landscape maitenance and nursery ownership due to not being hired by mainstream Americans.
Now I don't care how you divide up 2nd and third it makes no difference to me. It is a more recent thing anyway. Yenling mentioned Oregon becoming a hotspot in the future. That may be as far as material goes. They do have a monopoply on pulling a lot of crazy material out of the forest. that material is distributed all around the United States. It becomes diluted.
On par the largest concentration of active participants of bonsai as well as the largest concentration of semi world class trees is in California. It has been that way for Sixty years and continues today. Any other state in the Union will have a long ways to catch up and surpass that legacy.
So yes...there are pockets of talent here and there around the country, and I would never think to diminish any accomplisments of any artist. But it is not comparable to consider a state worthy with one master artist.
If Marco were to move to Oklahoma tomorrow would that elevate Oklahoma to no. 2 on this list by that one action?
Having Ryan Neil and Michael Hagadorn move to Oregon means they have two new teachers but still lack the resources to teach beginners, have a convention, or boast 58 active clubs state wide as well of those clubs and study groups not under the GSBF umbrella.