Category: bonsai aesthetics
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The Coast Live Oak: Inspiration for Bonsai Design
The Coast Live Oak (Quercus agrifolia) thrives along the Pacific Coast, typically within 50 miles of the shoreline. It’s an evergreen with a rounded canopy and thick trunk. Notably, coastal live oaks are showcased in bonsai exhibitions, reflecting their intricate natural form and unique aesthetic inspired by their native habitat…
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Bonsai Inspiration: The Woodblock Prints of Kawase Hasui
Kawase Hasui’s art inspired Steve Jobs and many others. What can bonsai artists learn from his work?
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Repotting Season – Bonsai as an Aesthetic Practice
It is this cycle, this rhythm of stress and then recovery and the tree’s “memory” of these events, as embodied by its form, that leads to the creation of great, old bonsai… Walter Scott The changing of the seasons signals to bonsai practitioners that it is time to perform a…
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Nine of the Best Books about Trees and Art for 2024
If bonsai = (nature + art), multiplied by time, then the books listed here are truly “bonsai books”. Their subjects range from art, aesthetics, and creativity, to our relationships with trees and trees’ relationships with each other. The Creative Act: A Way of Being, by the music producer Rick Rubin,…
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Judgement Day
There is no bonsai exhibition judging system that will satisfy everyone. But can we do better?
