Steve’s exposure to bonsai began growing up in Southern California as he listened in as his father and other Japanese friends would gather monthly to work on their bonsai trees. Many of these friends were early founders of the bonsai movement in America including John Naka, Harry Hirao, Frank Goya, and Ben Oki.  Steve proudly cares for many of his father’s trees. Steve shares his knowledge throughout the West Coast by caring for private collections and providing individual and group workshops. He has been a strong leader at San Mateo’s Sei Boku Bonsai Kai and spoken at Kusamura a number of times.

We encourage members to bring in their Tanuki for Show and Tell

Photos From Our February “Styling” Workshop

Everyone had fun as members participated in two styling exercises. Thanks again to Jiechang “JC" Zhang for creating the bonsai sketches for use in this workshop. Members were given a sketch of trees that needed styling and used white-out pens to remove the foliage in their sketch. They were then able to discuss and compare “their” tree with suggestions by the instructors. 

Deadlines and Timelines

• Please fill out the tree submission form two weeks before the show, that is, by Friday, April 11. Please let Charlene know by this date if you will be submitting this form later.

• Friday night setup begins at 5PM when tables are delivered. The show layout will be nearly the same as last year.

• New this year: You MAY bring your show tree(s) and stand(s) or just the stand(s) on Friday evening, if you stick around long enough for setup of tables, backdrops, and runners to be complete. Place your tree with stand or just the stand on the place Charlene has pre-assigned. Charlene will have this information ready on Friday night. Please do not place your tree without a stand. We need to keep the table linens clean. Also be mindful that the sales trees are coming in on Friday evening, too. You don’t want your show tree(s) to end up on the sales tables.

Sean Morris will be bringing the club’s show stands on Friday evening. Some will already be reserved and will be marked with the club member’s name. Others will be available if you want to take your chances that an appropriate stand can be found among those not reserved.

• Friday night pizza at 6PM for those who help with setup.

• Consignment trees (with consignment form filled out) should be brought Friday evening when you come to help with set-up.

• First dibs members only presale of donated and consignment trees and pots on Friday evening.

• Saturday 8AM-9AM: Bring your show trees no later than 9AM; show begins at NOON. Our curators have a very short time to place all the trees. Important: If you are going to be arriving after 9 am, let the curators (Charlene or Sean) know so we leave a spot open for your display. 

• Sunday 9AM-11AM Trees to be photographed.

• Coffee and pastries available for members both mornings at reception desk.

• Saturday and Sunday lunch for members and their families 11:30AM-2:30PM

• Sunday STRIKE at 4PM; celebration and raffle after show take down

ALL hands on deck for Friday night set up and for show take down (strike). It’s fun when we all work together, taking part in making our show spectacular! Oh, and did we say we are serving pizza on Friday!

Members Only
Gentle Reminder: All members are encouraged to donate two trees or bonsai related items for the club sale. Value of $25 each or more. New or first-year members are not required to fulfill this club obligation. Donations help cover show expenses, the largest item of our annual budget.

Tree Placement
Much thought goes into the placement of trees. We thank Charlene Fischer and Sean Morris, our show curators, for their excellent visual aesthetics and diligent attention to all presentation matters. When you arrive on Saturday morning, we ask you to place your own tree(s) on the table space determined in advance by the curators. Information you provide on the tree submission form (height and flow to left or right) will help us set up more efficiently. The show curators will make these tentative designations and then will adjust/rearrange the trees for best visual presentation of the show as a whole.

Many, Many Thanks (and more to come) to Catherine Iwaki for designing our show postcard, to Paticia Lee and Manshu Verma for all the countless (endless) hours they have put into the new website and new QR code, So many details they have been creating and attending to. They are our go-to NEW IDEA team! Also, thank you Charlene Fischer and Lynne O’Dell for being my right and left hands.

ALL hands on deck for Friday night set up and for show take down (strike). It’s fun when we all work together, taking part in making our show spectacular! Oh, and did we say we are serving pizza on Friday!

Lynne O’Dell, our diligent VP, was worried that we would not have enough accents to experiment with display possibilities. In response to her encouragement to bring accents, we had SO many, we fill a tabletop. We were, however, a little short on trees, so Charlene had to run home quickly, just down the street, to add a tree or two. We also had many stands, slabs, and jitas, so we were fully supplied with possibilities before Valerie began her presentation.

Valerie made distinctions between formal displays (perhaps in a tokonoma, on a single table, or separated from other displays by bamboo sticks or screens) and running displays of single trees, with an accent here and there for variety. At Kusamura, most of our displays have been running displays, though some members put together two- or three-point displays that are distinct from the running displays. We will be trying to do more two- and three-point displays this year, and may need to pair our tree with someone else’s tree or accent to make this happen.

Valerie began the discussion by presenting photos from the last two Pacific Bonsai Expo Shows, and they were all enlightening in one way or another. Some were also more successful than others and even those of us who are new to these ideas could soon tell the ones that weren’t working together very well.

Various observations and considerations included:

• Most PBE displays were two-point displays with a large tree and an accent, that might be a small plant or kusamono, a suiseki, or small sculpture.

• There were some displays with three points: two medium trees and an accent. This is the kind we may be able to make this year by pairing our medium tree with another member’s medium tree.

• Accents are used to stop flow; an accent should have fewer elements than the main tree.

• Is the main tree’s movement leading to the left or right? We started figuring this out from Valerie’s photos, though a few displays got it wrong: the tree should flow toward the accent and the accent, if it flows, should flow toward the tree. But many “confused” trees. You could make an argument that it flows right or left. It all depends, became Valerie’s mantra.

• Then the vocabulary accumulated: spacing, verticality, fullness or thickness, lightness, color, visual weight, color, mass, transparency, texture, seasonal, complementary, dimensionality, density, altering axis. Along the way, I’m sure we invented a few terms of our own but we began to see what differences different combinations made.

• And the stands complicated the choices even more: elegant tall, elegant low, thin, thick, sturdy, stabilizing, lines mirroring lines of the tree or pot. Are tall trees better on a slab or on a medium or on a tall stand? It all depends!

• Placement of pot: should be within the grooved space on the top of the stand; feet of stand should not be close in line with feet of pot. Glazed pots usually for deciduous, and unglazed for conifers. But there can be exceptions.

• Three-point display: two medium trees with accent. How to make sure the two trees (of different species of course, one perhaps conifer, one deciduous) and their stands complement but do not duplicate in height or mass, thickness or thinness of foliage. And then how in the heck do you complement those two with an accent that doesn’t get lost or doesn’t draw the eye away from the trees. How close to the two trees should it be, or to one tree rather than the other? One needs to develop an aesthetic eye for such things, and with Valerie guiding us through the slides and then various trial combinations of trees, stands, and accents, we were beginning to teach our eyes.

• Major bonsai shows such as the Kokufu-ten do not use scrolls but other major shows do. They add another plane to the display and therefore more complications and complexities. We at Kusamura are wary of using scrolls unless they are very good and complement the display, especially seasonally. Traditionally, scrolls are placed exactly in the center of the display. Our curators may simply suggest not to use a scroll, unless it is pretty perfect.

• We saw a slide or two of shohin displays but did not go into all the numerous factors in placing five or six trees small trees (shohin) in such a display, a black pine always on top, varied pots, and trees. Not enough time to do everything.