An online “GREEN event” with recorded event presentations to view at your leisure. Demonstrations were all taped in other countries and the tape speed increased when appropriate – the show was a classy production. The length of a demo could be 35 minutes or 1.5 hours. I watched only one live presentation at 9 pm, that time and the 11 pm live demos were too late for me. So I watched when convenient. As a registrant, you had access to tapes until mid-November.
The headline professional demonstrators were at 9 and 11 pm. They included many other demos in an Additional Presentations section on the Convention website. It had nine presenters. Tony Bebb, who is related to Lindsey Bebb, the convention President. Tony worked on a large Ficus forest, which he and afriend collected when they were 19 year olds. To me, the forest front he chose looked wicked cool. I envisioned a knight on a horse within its many stems and structure. Also, he made a unique slab. It was 1” thick wood with waterproofing on the top side. He had rough sandstones that he fitted to make aperimeter which was held in place with muck. Tony did an “Australia presentation” on the Professional Headliner group as well. His team used raw material from the Australian bush and made a forest. And for demonstrations with a travelogue feel, Tony had roosters calling, Australian birds, and one airplane in the background on the Additional Presentation section, alone, out in a shack, with no music.
Another presenter on the Additional Presenter page was from India; Veer Choudary. He had a uniqueoffering, making potting stones / rocks using vitrified bricks – waste from kilns in his area. These were large odd shaped rock like waste that he chiseled or power tooled to make a mountain and other features. He used “Aquarium glue” to combine pieces. I never saw that glue used before. Travelogue Rating – Roosters calling not as good as in Tony Bebb in Australia, but had crow-sounding birds for a real feel of being in outdoors India.
A professional demo by Mauro Stemberger, representing Europe, but was taped in Grand Rapids MI while working on a customer’s Rocky Mountain Juniper and creating his usual perfect look. He really had very good information to share. His demo tree was a travelogue itself.
I ran out of outdoor demos with roosters, so here is a rundown of A list presenters:
* Hugo Zamora (Mexico) – split a Raw Juniper trunk, to do heavy bends.
* Shinji Suzuki (Japan) – ancient large Juniper bonsai revitalized. Fearless to work aggressively on it.
* Soek ju Kim (Korea) – Taxus / Yew bonsai, lots of carving, cleaning. Unique background guitar music, he worked alone, no assistants. Nice music.
* Ravindran Damodar (India) – Raw Silverberry tree. It was made into a windswept bonsai. He said the bough’s structure need depth and not flat for these trees. Also, how pretty they are, with fruit & flowering.
* Michael Hagedorn (USA) – Maple bonsai, alone, with his cool background music.
* Jonathan Cain (Australia) – A juniper set on side as a raft. I really thought this looks the same as the Jim Baley tree which Jim had entered in the last National show in Rochester, NY. Same design, shiver my timbers.
* Zhang Zhigang (China) – Penjing using raw Chinese Maple. He did a great show, occasional background music, taped in the outdoors and I forgot, he too had a rooster calling. The end showed the tree composition with a breeze moving the Maple leaves, sounding in applause
along with the sound of the wind as the music. This may be the Travelogue Winner. Nacho Marin (Venezuela) – A tropical tree that is 90 % dead wood. The team had Stihl brand chain saws for wood carving. They carved almost every inch of this S. American tree that has
primarily dead wood as its natural state. Chain saws were the music for the first half, followed by nice music for the finish. He showed a video of the tree three months later. The few remaining live twig clumps leafing out. A drawing he made of his desired future tree. He runs
bonsai schools.
Most of the demos were taped indoors. The few that were outdoors, show-wise it was like having back branching on a bonsai trees. All very good.
Steve Fluett
