The Art of Bonsai Project

Worth a read.
http://bonsaijournal.com/profile-valavanis.php

And for something a little more recent... viewtopic.php?f=23&t=603

Dear Mr. Page:

Autumn to come
A single pine admonishing
to endure and remain fine

Dear Andrew

Communication
With a few words of haiku
Form most elegant

Well - you count better your syllables, as I see. Since English does not know the Japanese mora, I neglect that sometimes and prefer soul - this a hint to Richard Patefield on how to deal with things and spirits...

The attached image is from the First National Bonsai Exhibit banquet. From left to right are Seiji and Della Shiba, my wife Kathi and myself.

Mike

Cling hard to your 'souls',
Love metaphysics and magic.
Fail to advance art.

It is not our business to judge about advance and failure, others will do that. If we don't do anything, they won't have anything to judge, so relax. Art is not an absolute system. it just is.

.

Look - it seems to me, you want to find out <how to do>. You would like to have precise hints, exact steps, the correct recipe. This is an impossibility.

One can only create, look and compare. Art is not an engineering business.

.

Richard,
You have been told by several accomplished bonsai artists on this forum that what you seek cannot be found. Yet, still, you continue stubbornly to make the same demands. If you are here to teach, if you know so much more than we do, then please offer something positive. If you are here to learn then please do so rather than reject the statements of those with a greater understanding than yourself.

"Cling hard to your 'souls'," you write cynically. Yes, for that is where art is born.

"Love metaphysics and magic." Yes, for those are the tools of creativity.

"Fail to advance art." But Richard, that is precisely all that your cherished yearning for the ability to describe art in purely physical terms could possibly achieve: to reduce an art to a craft.

As we travel the path to the happiness of bonsai nirvana, the destination may be just around the next turn. or maybe over the top of the next hill.

There will always be more turns in the road and more hills to climb in this unending journey to the secret place of enlightenment.

The journey is the lesson. The lesson is the destination.

MP

Sounds like a fourtune cookie.

I have offered you the chance to get out of the animist dark ages, forget the metaphysics and really communicate something. If you want to stay back there with those who would reward the continuation of the attitudes and aesthetics of 50yrs ago, I don't mind.