Every January about this time the Bay Island Bonsai club puts on their annual exhibit of fine bonsai. This year they were at the Pleasanton, CA fairgrounds in two buildings. The first housing about 90 bonsai trees and the second with numerous vendors selling trees, pots, stands, suiseki and the like.
Attending this year’s show was Akio Kondo from Japan. Akio is a professional bonsai artist and in this year’s Sakufu-ten show took second place. The Sakufu-ten exhibit is the only one where professional bonsai growers can exhibit traditional trees under their own names.
BIB also had three workshops of which our favorite was the suiseki presentation by Mas and Janet. They gave a 90 minute presentation on suiseki which was a real help for those who know little about the art form. Their program presented a complete overview including the basic requirements, examples of the various forms/descriptors of suiseki categories, the various forms of display and the deeper meaning of collecting and showing suiseki. If you missed this presentation, I have asked Janet to post the presentation on her and Mas’ blog which you can find here and my hope is that it will be for you to read and enjoy.
On Sunday, KJ and I snapped a few photos – very quickly – and they are included in this post. It is very difficult to photograph bonsai walking down an exhibit floor. BIB normally posts the show photos several months after the show so check here for their availability. We were involved in shooting this show in 2006-2008 and those photographs are a better example of what can be done with the right setup. So until the club posts the official photos enjoy these.
A Japanese Black Pine in a very high quality Chinese Antique pot
Mas Nakajima's Suiseki Art
This photograph doesn’t do justice to how beautiful this setup was at the show. Check out Mas and Janet’s site for better photographs of Mas’ art.
Accent Plant in a Japanese roof tile - BIB always has excellent accent plants
Attention to detail - excellent layout of moss
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Just an fabulous-looking show. Really one of the consistently highest-quality bonsai shows in America.
Mas’ stone presentation looks wonderful even in a photograph. Its so rare to see a suiban display with good sand prepared beautifully. The attention to detail is better than some Japanese suiseki displays I’ve seen.
Thanks for posting this.
I promise Sam!
Thanks Janet. Let us know when and we will post up a notice about it!
Mike – I agree with you. We mostly avoid doing suiban displays, simply because neither of us have much expertise beyond what we’ve picked up here and there (mainly from Hideko-san). And without a much larger house than we have (and spending a lot of money) there’s no way you can have the right (well-crafted) suiban and the right sand for any given stone. I can’t stand seeing this kind of thing egregiously badly done…
In this case though the stone really wants a suiban and it happened to come together. It’s not a fine suiban, but it’s acceptable and worked okay with the stone.
I am in awe. That Atlas Cedar? with the really thick trunk is a stunner.