Page 11 - BSAM 2015 Q1

The Demonstrations
By Christian Vos, Belgium
Photos courtesy Bonsai Association Belgium (BAB)
The headliners Ryan Neil, USA, Salvatore Liporace, Italy, and Seok Ju Kim, Korea, had the opportunity to show us their skills and were able to entertain the visitors on Saturday and Sunday afternoon.
The demonstrations were commented both in English, Dutch and French by Marc De Beule and Malcolm Hughes. Both are very experienced bonsai artists.
Demonstrations on Saturday
Ryan Neil: Ryan worked on a very old mugo pine with a beautiful nebari and trunk. His goal was to make the tree more compact. In order to do this, he cut some of the thicker branches and used thinner and more flexible branches to build up the bonsai. A bit of work on the deadwood wiring resulted in an extraordinary pre-bonsai.
As usual, Ryan worked without delay on the bon- sai, with dedication and motivation, which obviously entertained the public. During his demonstration, he provided the visitors with tips and tricks and an- swered questions from the audience. Similar to the previous years, he proved himself to be a real artist and entertainer, but also succeeded in staying humble all the time.
Salvatore Liporace: Salvatore worked on a Juni- perus sabina from the mountains. The tree has been planted in a pot about 3 to 4 years ago and had been wired before. It is now strong enough to be styled.
Although the tree is only 45 cm high, it took more than three hours to finalise the wiring. Only one branch needed wiring of 2 mm thick, all the rest could be done by wire of 0.6/0.8/1.0/1.2 mm.
The deadwood was cleaned up and the beautiful trunk with living lines appeared. Water was sprayed on the branches to keep the branches moist and to allow to put them into the right position without damage. Thanks to his many years of experience and dedication to the art of bonsai, Salvatore managed to create a magnificent bonsai out of a wild bush. The final result was outstanding.
Seok Ju Kim: The mugo pine on which Seok Ju Kim demonstrated was a huge yamadori. No less than six men were needed to put the tree into the right po- sition. After cutting off nearly half of the branches, Seok Ju Kim started to protect the thick branches with black elastic band. For the wiring of it, he used two to three 5 mm copper wires. To bend the very thick branches (up to 6-7 cm diameter), he used a special winch, (see photo on bottom right). With regular in- terval these branches were bent into the final position and fixed with steel wires. At the end, more than ten guy-wires kept the branches in position.
After the assistant wired the thinner branches, Seok Ju Kim positioned the branch- es and the nearly ‘mission impossible’ to make a pre-bonsai out of this huge tree became ‘mission accomplished.’ Something special, never seen before by many bonsai lovers.
Top row; Ryan Neil’s demo tree, before and after styling.
Second row; Salvatore Liporace’s demo tree, before and after styling.
Third and fourth row; Seok Ju Kim’s demo tree before styling, Seok Ju Kim applying elastic tape, the mugo pine after styling, and the special manual winch he uses to bend heavy branches.
April/May/June 2015 | BCI | 9