Appalachian Bonsai
The North Carolina Arboretum
I'd like to introduce somebody, of a character called Tanuki. Here
in the United States it's often pronounced "tan-oo-ki". And the idea is that
this piece of dead wood, with its sculptural beauty, and this tree, that's had a hard time of
things but is still in the game, might somehow be brought together to good effect for both of them.
A Radical Redesign with Arthur Joura
March 17, 2020 The North Carolina Arboretum
It's a trickster type of figure, right. It's into practical jokes and deceiving people. And
the kind of bonsai I hope to make today is often referred to as a tanuki,
or a tan-oo-ki, because it's a bit of a trickery, right? It's taking a dead thing
and uniting it with a living thing to create the illusion of something that it truly isn't.
This is a shimpaku juniper, which is a very common bonsai subject. It's had some hard luck
being neglected for the last couple of years,
and the time has come to either do something positive with it or do something negative
with it but to do something with it, because they can only go on autopilot for so long.
When a long-traveled road reaches an unexpected end
what remains of the old idea is reshaped into a new idea
and the next journey begins.
Those of you who are sharp-eyed and paying attention,
you'll notice that there's already some wire on this tree. That was put on yesterday.
Wiring is a critical tool that allows you to position branches where you want them to be.
So, the parts that are wired are what I expect to use, and the parts that aren't will not be. And if
you look you'll, see that most of the tree is not wired. Most of this tree is going to be cut away.
So, the other day another volunteer, Robin, she asked about what I thought was going to happen
with it, and I told her 'you know, that those parts were going to come off.' She was, she was
obviously distraught at the prospect of that. When she looked at the plant, and perhaps when some of
you looked at the plant too, it seemed fine. Like 'what's wrong with that plant? You know,
so it has a few parts that aren't there anymore. You can, you know, bend things around and fill in,
can't you?' Well you can. You can, right? There's a lot of things that you might do, but after
a while, doing this or doing anything, you get experience. And experience makes things a little
bit easier in some regards, because you have a frame of reference. You have past experience
that you can call on and say, 'you know, that sounds like a good idea, but if you pursue that,
it isn't guaranteed to work out real well. And you might spend years trying to make something
work that isn't going to work.' And experience saves you the time by saying, 'well, you know
the likelihood of that working is not worth the effort to try to make it work.' And so, this.
In my estimation, these parts
are usable to this new idea and those parts were not. So these are here. Those are down there.
Well, what we want to do with this is make it look like this tree had such an incident, but
years ago, years ago. And it's had time to kind of reorder itself, right? So there's a logic to it,
and that's part of what naturalism is about. It's observing the way trees grow and understanding
why they grow the way they do, and then in shaping bonsai, trying to interpret that look.
Meanwhile, another factor that plays strongly into your decision-making process
is the desire for it to be aesthetically pleasing. When a tree puts itself back together after
an incident like a top being ripped out, it's not driven by logic. But as human beings, we
have other interests, and so we're concerned with appearances. And so, that gets factored in, too.
So, one thing we're going to need to do
in order to put these together is to get it out of the container and clear away some of
the root mass, because it's physically in the way of putting the two trees together.
And this is a handy time to give the usual caveat, which should be part of every bonsai
demonstration. Namely, that what we end up with today is in all likelihood not wonderful.
Right? That's not to make excuses beforehand, but rather to just be plain honest about it.
Things end up today at a certain state of completion, but not complete.
Not complete, it takes time. We're not looking for a whole lot more development in the growing parts,
but what we will be looking for over time is some better blending of these two parts.
This is the part I've been very anxious about, getting these two to meet up, you know.
Let's go ahead and bite the bullet and get rid of some of it.
I hate to do it, but that's the only way that's gonna meet up.
Still,
it needs to nestle in here, so these are going to have to come out.
All right. That's got to get in more, so this has to be reduced some and potentially this,
too. Although I'd rather take it out of this one, because this wood is better, you know. So, if I've
got to take away from one or the other, I'd rather take it away from the wood that's not so good.
Often when these kind of tanuki bonsai are made it's a nice old piece of driftwood,
and then it's a very young plant that's typically added to it so that it's very pliable
and you can kind of shape the living wood to the dead wood. In this case,
this is, you know, this is old. It's not pliable at all. So we're going to have to
work with the contour of this as it exists, and probably take off things like that,
things like that, so that we can mate the two of them together.
The main issue is trying to get them close enough that it'll look
believable, and I think I'm at the point now where I'm probably as close as I'm
going to get. And the gaps that remain can be worked in to look like they belong there.
So, this is bad, right? But that'll have to be fixed through carving.
The rest of it is not so bad, except for the glue leaking out. And they're together, although
I wish they were together tighter than that, but they are together in a way that I can live with.
All right, it needs to get potted up.
When it comes to bonsai, there are definite trends.
There are fads. There are things that go into style and out of style. There's a vogue.
In modern bonsai, you see a lot of plants that have this very beautiful sculptural element of
dead wood. And then typically, those plants will have a green triangle of living foliage situated
in the design, and that tells you that it's alive. But the main focus of the thing is that dead wood.
Well, we don't have any trees like that in our collection. The focus of our bonsai effort is
primarily naturalistic, naturalistic bonsai. We're trying to present miniaturized trees that look
like trees in nature. And those that I was just talking about, which are very popular and
take a great deal of skill to produce, they are not that. They are not meant to be that
They are interpretations of this kind of tree, but they never look this wild and,
you know, untamed. They always look very influenced by the hands and minds of humans.
Inspiration from nature is timeless.
It has nothing to do with fads and trends. It supersedes all of that.
A Radical Redesign with Arthur Joura Bonsai Curator
Fashions can come and go. That's why naturalism is attractive to me, because it's founded on that
idea of nature being the constant, not the thing that's subject to the winds of fashion and fad.
[Produced by Appalachian Bonsai for The North Carolina Arboretum]
And as always, always, in anything, if you go against what's in vogue,
well, then you can expect a certain response, you know? That's just how it is.
[Special Thanks to Rebecca Caldwell and the Volunteers from the Arboretum.]
[Thanks to Adam Fenton from Virginia Tech and Jonathan Fung from San Jose State University]
[Music by Liquify, Duffmusiq, and Ottom]
[The North Carolina Arboretum]
[Appalachian Bonsai]
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