Transparent
Fashion & Art & Culture Magazine
Fashion & Art & Culture Magazine
Below
you can find pictures taken directly from the recently
published
magazine, Transparent, an Osaka based fashion and art magazine.
I
was asked to do the article by a friend who was involved with the
magazine. Before the photo shoot I had no idea what to do and
to
be honest neither did the artistic editor nor the camera woman!
We managed to bring together lots of different ideas and
aspects from bonsai and other fields. The original text in Japanese was written by myself, and a translation can be found below.
I'm proud of the pictures and the experience was a good one for me, opening my eyes to different aspects of bonsai in ways that I had not considered before.
Click on the pictures for full page
view!First page, featuring me, a regal Czech marionette and a beautifully flowering Lilac bonsai.
Full Translation at bottom...
The second page features two very contrary but equally valid interpretations of bonsai, a traditional cascade black pine, ancient and strong; and a short lived, bright and pleasing offering for a lover with her breakfast...
The text reads "A window into another world"
The final pair of
pictures again contrast with each other and yet each is as meaningful
as the other.The text on the first picture reads...
"Yellow and Purple are difficult to match, if you get it wrong, they clash in disharmony, if done correctly they will show off each others regality and nobility. The line of the flower stem dances gracefully up from the chaos
* Purple is the colour of Japanese Nobility, Yellow is the Chinese Royal colour..."
and on the second...
"Half the tree is dead and decayed but it still shows off. The solitary flower shines like a beacon in the dark, the brilliant red pot radiates, proud of the new born beauty.
Here is the eternal dance, light versus dark, good versus evil, life versus death"
Full Translation of the text on the first page...
Bonsai is a very Japanese art, but is appreciated more outside of Japan. One of the most distinctive and memorable images of modern japonisme, but one of the most misunderstood. Ambiguous and mysterious, bonsai can be seen as a bizarre abuse of trees or a glorification of natural beauty.
As a bonsai artist I want to create trees that look natural, for me the ideal is to attain “the artless art” but to do that I must use my hands to sculpt a tree so that it grows how I want it to. This diametrically opposed idea of “sculpted nature” is at the heart of bonsai. I struggle with this problem everyday, is what I am doing natural or unnatural? Am I pulling the strings?
One thing is certain, that in modern life there is not enough nature. We have concreted over everything, everywhere we turn is something man made and we have lost our affinity with nature….but then we have bonsai, a little piece of man made nature that we can keep in our garden and in our hearts.
Fashion is a combination of both the clothes and the person wearing them, with bonsai it is a combination between the pot and the tree, both are as important as the other. Colour, shape, and age are all important. With many bonsai we try to create an impression of great age, a tree which is older and more powerful than the viewer, so an old pot is very important. Other times we want to create a fresh, new born image so a shiny, bright pot is appropriate.
Bonsai is an art like any other, it must be displayed and created for other people to appreciate. For whatever reason you do it; for fun, for your girlfriend or for customers, the most important thing is to create something beautiful.
Biography
From the countryside of England to the big city of Tokyo in search of Japanese beauty. Studied Astrophysics at university for four years then studied bonsai as an apprentice to a famous master in Tokyo for another four. Now freelance bonsai artist, writer and flaneur.
On the picture...
"All the world is a stage, And all the men and women merely players"
Whose strings are being pulled? The puppet, the tree or the puppeteer...bend me shape me, anyway you want me"
It sounds a lot better in Japanese!
