On Saturday, professional nature illustrator, Tina Thieme Brown taught a drawing class at The Museum. About 10 students gathered to “draw from bonsai.” Here are some great photos of the class by our Social Media Intern, Dani Grace. Read more about Tina’s creative process drawing nature in a past blog here.
Interested in taking a class with Tina at the Museum? Make sure to sign up on the form below and you’ll be the first to know if we announce another date!
As we crawl toward the end of the summer and into the beginning of fall, I look back on my first day at The National Bonsai & Penjing Museum in March. They say, “Time flies when you are having fun,” and I very much agree. Caring for and working on bonsai full-time for the past six months has been even more amazing than I could have imagined. Since my first day, I have met many talented and friendly bonsai artists from around the world, from whom I have learned specific design and horticulture techniques for various species.
Andy Bello with Michael Hagedorn on World Bonsai Day 2019 at the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum
I took some time off and traveled to Bremerton, Washington, where I had the privilege of staying and working with Dan Robinson – a seasoned bonsai professional – for a little over a week. I also visited with Aaron Packard, the curator of the Pacific Bonsai Museum and former assistant curator of The National Bonsai & Penjing Museum. I learned and shared ideas about bonsai with artists who influence my personal work. I experienced and gathered inspiration from the wonderful ancient trees that still exist in the Northwestern United States.
Bello prunes a Korean black pine with a nice view at Elandan Gardens in Bremerton, WA
Working on the trees in the National Collection has been an extremely educational and enjoyable experience. I have worked on a diverse collection of species, while also learning when and how to apply different techniques, including when are the best times to prune, wire, fertilize and repot, depending on the season. My favorite seasonal tasks thus far are repotting in the late winter and early spring or decandling or removing spring growth from red or black pines to stimulate a second flush of growth in the summer.
Working on trees donated by prominent figures in bonsai history – including John Naka, Saichi Suzuki and Bill Valavanis – has been a humbling experience.
Post decandling on Japanese black pine (Pinus thunbergii) donated by Saichi Suzuki
Thinning and structural pruning on the “Yamaki” white pine (Pinus parviflora)
As I move into the second half of my apprenticeship, I hope I can continue to meet and befriend other bonsai artists and enthusiasts and continue to expand my horticulture and design skills. I will continue to share the wonder and joy of bonsai with the public who come to visit The National Bonsai & Penjing Museum.
Best,
Andy Bello
Andy Bello has been selected as the Museum’s 2019 First Curator’s Apprentice. The National Bonsai & Penjing Museum's First Curator's Apprenticeship for 2019 is funded by generous grants to the National Bonsai Foundation from Toyota North America and The Hill Foundation. More on Andy here.
Dragon Penzai at the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum, Stanley Chinn
Many people are familiar with penjing and bonsai, but what happens when you fuse the styles together? This trident-maple – named for its trident-shaped leaves that turn red and gold in the fall – trained by local penjing master Stanley Chinn, is a great example.
While penjing usually depict scenes, bonsai are generally single trees. Chinn, who emigrated from China as a child, spent most of his life in Silver Spring, Maryland, fusing bonsai and penjing to form beautiful creations, like this maple.
After Chinn passed away in 2002, he left most of his collection to the National Bonsai Foundation, the non-profit branch that supports the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum. Former curator Jack Sustic chose 10 trees from the collection to keep at the Museum. Chinn’s trees are also on display at botanical gardens in Montreal and Brooklyn.
“He was very interested in the history of penjing and how it started, which happened way before bonsai ever reached Japan,” Museum curator Michael James said.
Not just a fan of the trees, Chinn loved spending his free time outdoors.
“If you ever wanted to find Stanley, you’d just go look in his backyard,” said James
Chinn trained the maple in the photo above to illustrate a Chinese dragon perched on a stone. James surmises that Chinn fused two trident maple seedlings together on the stone to create the configuration: one of the maple tree seedlings creates the dragon’s back and tail and the other seedling forms the creature’s neck and head.
“He was a master at the root-over-rock style, so he was really good at training little roots of seedlings down stones,” James said.
The tree represents the “dancing dragon” style of the Sichuan school of penjing.
“The different parts of the tree become representative of the dragon’s body,” he said. “The roots grasping the rock are the claws of the dragon, the branches become the bones or the body of the dragon and the leaves emulate dragon scales.”
James said Museum volunteers use techniques like defoliation to balance the tail and the head of the dragon.
“The two seedlings Chinn used either have different root systems or some genetic variation, so they grow at different rates,” he said. “The tail portion is a little more vigorous than the head portion, so at the Museum we have to prune it accordingly.”
Penjing arrangements categorized under the Sichuan style, which Chinn specialized in, are often characterized by their curvy branches and trunks, called “earthworm style.” James said Chinese artists used to use palm fiber to form exaggerated arcs that resemble the body of an earthworm.
“You just don’t see them in the Japanese collection like you do in his style,” James said. “You can just look through the Chinese collection and look at the trees and say, ‘Oh, that’s Stanley.’ He just did his own thing and it’s very evident in his work.”
“I never thought that I would become an artist or teacher.”
Young Choe has spent more than 20 years volunteering at The National Bonsai & Penjing Museum and working sporadically as a horticulturist at the U.S. National Arboretum. She loves her work, but in her spare time follows what seems to be her true calling of kusamono, the art of curating collections of wild grasses and flowers in unique pots or trays.
Choe fuses her artistic talent with horticulture, resulting in a process she calls “articulture.” Choe says that Kusamono is the perfect tie between her Asian culture, knowledge of plants’ physiology and the talent she has developed toward creating beautiful works. Many kusamono styles exist, but according to Choe, the most developed versions of the art form come from Japan and Europe.
Kusamono can be created in various vessel-like pots or moss balls and can be put on display by itself, on a tray or on a ceramic tile, paired with bonsai as an accent plant.
“It’s a living art form,” says Choe. “Every plant is different depending on how you create it, what kind of plants you put together and which pots you use.”
Choe affirms that kusamono is different than ikebana or bonsai. But, like those practices, each kusamono arrangement requires a unique pruning style that builds a special form over time.
Choe had wanted to study plants since she was young, but horticulture was not a popular subject in her home city of Seoul, South Korea. She ended up studying Asian art in South Korea, but upon moving to America she began volunteering at the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum, an experience that led her back to her old interest in plants.
Soon after, Choe enrolled at the University of Maryland where she received a Bachelor of Science in horticulture. When Choe first started at The National Bonsai & Penjing Museum, the little accent plants that often accompany bonsai arrangements fascinated her. Hoping to learn the art herself, she traveled to Japan three times for a week each time over the course of about five years to study under Keiko Yamane, a kusamono master.
“At that time, I simply learned this because I loved it,” she said. “I never thought that I would become an artist or teacher.”
She now travels around the world instructing on the art of kusamono to other budding practitioners. Most recently, Choe worked on a kusamono arrangement for a reception the Museum held for the American Public Gardens Association’s annual conference.
“When I share this art form, the students are very motivated and happy,” she said. “When I see that kind of energy from people, it makes me happy.”
Choe says that she is grateful to the staff of the U.S. National Arboretum and members of the National Bonsai Foundation for supporting her as a kusamono artist and says she tries to work on kusamono as much as she can when she isn’t working at the Arboretum.
“Kusamono is threatening my main job right now!” Choe joked. “I just keep doing it, I can’t give it up.”
The National Bonsai Foundation (NBF) and the worldwide bonsai community mourn the loss of Solita D. Tafur Rosade who passed away on Aug. 31st, 2019. A beloved figure who dedicated her life to promoting the art of bonsai, Soli was born in Colombia, South America, but left at an early age to be educated in the United States, Spain and Switzerland.
Returning to Colombia after college, Soli married and raised two children. Her love of nature and her hobbies of painting and gardening gave way to the fascinating world of bonsai. In 1984 she attended her first bonsai class in Cali, Columbia. Later while in Colombia, she authored a bonsai manual in Spanish entitled "The Essential in Bonsai," and became President of the Asociación Vallecaucana de Bonsai.
Soli’s devotion to the art of bonsai took her to many places in the world, both as a bonsai artist and as a bonsai diplomat. She gave demonstrations and held workshops at international bonsai conventions and other bonsai events in Asia, Europe, India, South Africa, New Zealand, United States, Canada and several countries in Latin America.
In 1992, Solita founded the Latin American Bonsai Federation (FELAB) and served as FELAB's President until 1998. From 1998 to 2002, she was the President of Bonsai Clubs International (BCI). In 2005, she became the third Chairman of the World Bonsai Friendship Federation (WBFF), and after her term ended in 2009, she continued to serve as President of the North American Bonsai Federation (NABF) until 2018. Until her passing, she was a member of the NBF Board of Directors supporting the National Bonsai & Penjing Museum in Washington, D.C.
Earlier this year Solita and Chase Rosade celebrated 26 years of marriage. Together they owned and operated the Rosade Bonsai Studio in New Hope, Pennsylvania. From this beautiful studio, they invited both masters and novice alike to share in their love of bonsai, over the years giving countless classes and demonstrations to anyone willing to learn this wonderful art. From its inception the Rosade Bonsai Studio helped lead the way in celebrating World Bonsai Day in support of peace and friendship through bonsai.
There are few whose service to bonsai was greater than Soli’s. Much like WBFF’s founding fathers, Saburo Kato, John Naka and Ted Tsukiyama, Soli possessed “the spirit of bonsai” and worked tirelessly to spread the good word of bonsai both at home and abroad.
Soli leaves behind a loving family and many friends and admirers throughout the world whom she inspired with her boundless enthusiasm for bonsai. At the end of her life, she found great joy seeing how the art of bonsai is flourishing in every corner of the globe – and knowing that she had played a part in making this happen. Her contributions will long be remembered and her friendship will always be missed.
