Azalea Wars 3 - Styling, Bending projects

[Deep Sea Diver]

Been admiring various off the cuff designs the Japanese satsuki folks have done over the the years. They are amazing in creating out of the ordinary Satsuki from plants found cast off in the garden, greenhouse, nursery, estate sales and trash heaps. Then taking these plants that wouldn’t ordinarily be considered as good Satsuki bonsai material and over some years creating innovative works.

In other words, “Naturalistic” styling has been around for years in Japan. Even in the Satsuki world.

In this case there was a work that caught my eye over four years ago. This material itself was found in Japan, purchased in a Satsuki marketplace by Prof. Melvin Goldstein years ago. He brought it into the US, where the materials was styled over the years. His project can now be found at UMich’s Matthaei Botanical Gardens in Ann Arbor.



In 2020 decided to see if it was possible to replicate this design. Figured it had to be a clump. But didn’t have any satsuki suitable around in pots. Thus a branch of a favorite garden azalea was ground layered. The plant has really nice color, sort of like the composition above but has a semi double flower.

The past years the layer was taken off, root washed, repotted in kanuma and uppotted each year.

Last year the trunks were wired into a preliminary shape. Wire was removed in spring.

Today I took two wires and gathered together each of the two sub clumps to see how the composition was progressing…



This looked pretty good. So off came that wire and each sub trunk was separately wired.

…and here is what the project looks like now…



Definitely making progress.

Cher’s
DSD sends

 

[Pitoon]

Very cool project! Looking forward to seeing the progress pics.

 

[PeaceLoveBonsai]

This is great. Thanks for sharing.

 

[Glaucus]

Looks good. Once this ages and is properly styled, it will work well. I am a bit unclear though about both the example and your work. The multi-branched base, is that exposed roots and is it a unified trunk above that? Is it fused cuttings? Or is it a shoot that was very multi-branched just above the soil line, and that was wired to twine up more in parallel? Seems all ways that are fundamentally different to achieve this same effect.

 

[Michigan Tree Murderer]

Been admiring various off the cuff designs the Japanese satsuki folks have done over the the years. They are amazing in creating out of the ordinary Satsuki from plants found cast off in the garden, greenhouse, nursery, estate sales and trash heaps. Then taking these plants that wouldn’t ordinarily be considered as good Satsuki bonsai material and over some years creating innovative works.

In other words, “Naturalistic” styling has been around for years in Japan. Even in the Satsuki world.

In this case there was a work that caught my eye over four years ago. This material itself was found in Japan, purchased in a Satsuki marketplace by Prof. Melvin Goldstein years ago. He brought it into the US, where the materials was styled over the years. His project can now be found at UMich’s Matthaei Botanical Gardens in Ann Arbor.

Nice! Love to see where your work will go. I was lucky to see Melvin's work this summer at the gardens in AA. Very inspiring.

 

[Deep Sea Diver]

Good question!

I puzzled over this same origin question for quite awhile when considering how to approach creating this as we had many whips around, but only one year group of multiple azaleas, when contemplating making the design. Definitely not exposed roots each trunk terminates.… but whether it was constructed out of a clump or whips… that was the sticking point.

Actually asked Dr. Goldstein if he had an idea about this too. He didn’t know.

So figured it would be easier to get a variation of trunks a nice nebari and a traveling base from ground layering the last 8-10” of a branch. Doing this with an azalea in the landscape really sped up initial trunk growth and avoided having 12-18 whips in various containers.

Actually found another example similar, not quite as cool as Dr. G’s styling job in a Japanese Satsuki Kenkyo 609 Dec 2020 p69 using Chinzan, which would be a great one for another try as we’ve some Chinzan whips and plenty stock to get cuttings from.

Cheers
DSD sends

 

[Deep Sea Diver]

This thread will be a bit tricky for folks to understand. It is not a simple progression thread. The title points out it is about Styling and Bending Projects. Styling discussions are fair game.

In this post we go into human judgements of artistic qualities

For example: Why are asymmetrical designs considered interesting, while symmetrical designs are considered pleasing yet perhaps mundane (nice way of saying ‘sometimes boring’).

In Shigehiro Oishi’s book, Life in Three Dimensions book, Oishi highlighted a set of experiments on individual’s aesthetic judgements by Daniel Berlyne.

Professor Berlyne discovered a couple things.

When folks were faced with a series of shapes, folks rated the shapes from most pleasant to least pleasant in the following order:

- simple symmetrical shapes
- complex symmetrical shapes
- simple and asymmetrical
- complex and asymmetrical

Thus symmetry was the key to pleasantness. But…

On one hand folks rated simple and symmetrical shapes most pleasing, yet least interesting.

On the other hand, complex and asymmetrical shapes most interesting, less pleasing.

This is a lesson in bonsai styling on its own.

It’s a simple set of experiments, be assured these weren’t the only studies. Over the years a number of studies supported similar findings in art, poetry and literature.

While these results speak for themselves, it might be interesting to know the context this study was presented in.

Oishi’s book is a reasoned study on a third dimension of life most people don’t always consider. The commonly thought of life dimensions are Happiness and Meaning. The less commonly considered third dimension is a life of psychological richness. A life of curiosity, exploration and a variety of experiences.

This dimension impressed me as a direct reflection of a bonsai hobbyist’s journey. A life of curiosity, exploration and a whole variety of experiences.

Cheers!
DSD sends

 

[Deep Sea Diver]

Greetings azalea fans!

Around here we try out a bunch of different styles, but it takes a couple years before the style begins to show results.

I personally like playing the long game. My better half yearns to put trees in bonsai pots. Imagine what’s some of the discussion sounds like in our garden

A couple years ago, we picked up a really great for bonsai satsuki cultivar from Bill V’s annual seeding sale.

It’s named Momo no Haru. Darling pinkish flowers and smaller leaves. Over the years of experimenting I put it high on our list of cultivars that can take a licking and keep on ticking. (There are others that are really ornery, but that’s another story.)

Anyways, here’s the Momo no Haru as a cascade in its third year. Have to reduce the top hamper after flowering.



Another good ‘in - Nikko



Cheers
DSD sends