BONSAI GARDENING [10]

Bonsai (盆栽^?, lit. plantings in tray, from bon, a tray or low-sided pot and sai, a planting or plantings,  pronunciation (help·info))^[1] is a Japanese art form using miniature trees grown in containers. Similar practices exist in other cultures, including the Chinese tradition of penjing from which the art originated, and the miniature living landscapes of Vietnamese hòn non bộ. The Japanese tradition dates back over a thousand years, and has its own aesthetics and terminology.

"Bonsai" is a Japanese pronunciation of the earlier Chinese term penzai. A "bon" is a tray-like pot typically used in bonsai culture.^[2] The word bonsai is often used in English as an umbrella term for all miniature trees in containers or pots, but this article focuses on bonsai as defined in the Japanese tradition.

The purposes of bonsai are primarily contemplation (for the viewer) and the pleasant exercise of effort and ingenuity (for the grower).^[3] By contrast with other plant cultivation practices, bonsai is not intended for production of food, for medicine, or for creating yard-size or park-size gardens or landscapes. Instead, bonsai practice focuses on long-term cultivation and shaping of one or more small trees growing in a container.

A bonsai is created beginning with a specimen of source material. This may be a cutting, seedling, or small tree of a species suitable for bonsai development. Bonsai can be created from nearly any perennialwoody-stemmed tree or shrub species^[4] that produces true branches and can be cultivated to remain small through pot confinement with crown and root pruning. Some species are popular as bonsai material because they have characteristics, such as small leaves or needles, that make them appropriate for the compact visual scope of bonsai.

The source specimen is shaped to be relatively small and to meet the aesthetic standards of bonsai. When the candidate bonsai nears its planned final size it is planted in a display pot, usually one designed for bonsai display in one of a few accepted shapes and proportions. From that point forward, its growth is restricted by the pot environment. Throughout the year, the bonsai is shaped to limit growth, redistributefoliar vigor to areas requiring further development, and meet the artist's detailed design.

The practice of bonsai is sometimes confused with dwarfing, but dwarfing generally refers to research, discovery, or creation of plant cultivars that are permanent, genetic miniatures of existing species. Bonsai does not require genetically dwarfed trees, but rather depends on growing small trees from regular stock and seeds. Bonsai uses cultivation techniques like pruning, root reduction, potting, defoliation, and grafting to produce small trees that mimic the shape and style of mature, full-size trees.

Mugo pine and Ezo spruce, Pinus mugo and Picea glehnii, bonsai since 1985.

This Chinese hackberry, Celtis chinensis, has been trained as bonsai for more than 40 years.K

Catlin elm, Ulmus parvifolia 'Catlin', a miniature grove of 20 small trees.

K

Willow-leaf fig, Ficus salicifolia, bonsai since 1986.

Trident maple, Acer Buergerianum, bonsai since 1880, about 8 feet high. 

WIKIBONSAI

WIKI

SMALL FILM ON BIG BALDESSARI

The ... made a wonderful film on John Baldessari. For those that have not heard of this man.

Leave it to filmmakers, Ariel Schulman and Henry Joost of Supermarche, to come up with an original way to shorten the biography of world-renowned, American artist, John Baldessari to 6 minutes. Commissioned by LACMA for their first annual “Art + Film Gala,” honoring John Baldessari and Clint Eastwood, the short documentary, written by Gabriel Nussbaum and narrated by the definitive voice of Baldessari’s dear friend Tom Waits is a refreshing take on the classic video interview. The doc captivates and informs its audience with a witty narrative, using graphics and visuals, not unfamiliar to Baldessari’s own work.

Supermarche is known best for their somewhat controversial, documentary-style feature, Catfish, about a relationship that blossoms over the internet. Good to see that they they continue to push the limits of documentary filmmaking.

John Anthony Baldessari (born June 17, 1931) is an American conceptual artist known for his work featuring found photography and appropriated images. He lives and works in Santa Monica andVenice, California

Initially a painter, Baldessari began to incorporate texts and photography into his canvases in the mid 1960s. In 1970 he began working in printmaking, film, video, installation, sculpture and photography.^[1]He has created thousands of works that demonstrate—and, in many cases, combine—the narrative potential of images and the associative power of language within the boundaries of the work of art. His art has been featured in more than 200 solo exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe.^[2] His work influenced Cindy Sherman, David Salle, and Barbara Kruger among others.^[3]

John's home

JIM DENEVAN [LAND ART 1]

Today I discovered Jim Denevan. Some pictures on FaceBook / design-dautore.com made me curious. Jim makes temporary drawings on sand earth and ice that are eventually erased by waves and weather. Contrary to the seventies land-art, this, in my opinion doesn't try to bear more importance then it can offer us: an extra way of seeing the specific beauty of a place...

There is also a certain kind of contemplating quality in the making of these works. Listening to the story in this film, you recognize the meaning of the work for himself.

GARDENING [2] COSMIC SPECULATION / JENCKS

   

 

Charles Jencks Garden Of Cosmic Speculation.

Charles Jencks has been making the most interesting postmodern garden in Britain. Jencks, as the leading theorist of postmodernism, has a strong theoretical base 
Apart from its striking visual character, the most interesting thing about Jencks Portrack garden is the way it carries forward the ancient project of making gardens which imitate (mimesis) the Nature of nature. Jencks seeks to understand the nature of the world, through science, and to embody the nature of the world in a garden design. The pharaohs, Plato, the emperors of China, Alberti, Capability Brown, William Robinson and Charles Prince of Wales  had the same intention. The results differ because their understandings of nature differ.
One criticism I have heard of Jencks’ Portrack Garden is that he is too literal in his ‘imitations’ of physical and chemical laws, principles and formulae. While not seeing this as a fault, I agree with the observation. The alternative would be to use the revelations of science as Jencks’ renaissance predecessors used optics and mechanics to produce remarkable visual effects and devices in gardens. Outside the garden realm, one of the most dazzling examples of what might be done, from the nineteenth century, is the Foucault Pendulum, demonstrating the rotation of the earth. “The direction along which the pendulum swings rotates with time because of Earth’s daily rotation. The first public exhibition of a Foucault pendulum took place in February 1851 in the Meridian Room of the Paris Observatory. A few weeks later, Foucault made his most famous pendulum when he suspended a 28-kg bob with a 67-metre wire from the dome of the Panthéon in Paris. The plane of the pendulum’s swing rotated clockwise 11° per hour, making a full circle in 32.7 hours.”  It is not too late to be making Foucault Gardens, Foucault-inspired gardens and other gardens inspired by a scientific understandings of Nature.