3rd US National Bonsai Exhibition in Rochester NY

As the official videographer of the Exhibition, I am posting these pictures taken just before the opening of the Exhibition yesterday morning. I hope that you enjoy them and will be encouraged to visit the Exhibition which continues today, June 10th from 9AM to 5PM in Rochester, NY. People are visiting from all over the world and the Exhibition has 247 trees on display.


























[b]

Thanks for posting. The show this year is outstanding. The quality of the trees is second to none. Good job everyone.

More please.

Mitch

Show us more, please!

Regards,

I have a major place in my heart for the National Bonsai Exibition. Thank you Bill Valavanis

Mike Page

Roy,
Would you share some history about the pine? Neat tree!
And ... hoping for more photos of the event. Thanks!
Todd

the pine is very interesting - i like it lots

can they jack up the gold tassles though ? a bit distracting hanging down into the field of view .

looking forward to a good few pages of tree pics - especially the ones set up by Ryan Neil and Peter Warren - we've been following their journey on Peters blog.

cheers Marcus

Todd Ellis wrote:Roy,
Would you share some history about the pine? Neat tree!
And ... hoping for more photos of the event. Thanks!
Todd

The pine belongs to Ryan Neil.

Here is one of the winners, one of the other winners is the azalea shown above. The forthcoming video will give you a TASTE of this past weekend but for education purposes and sheer enjoyment of bonsai trees from all over the United States and Canada everyone should place their order for the Exhibition Book at [/url]http://internationalbonsai.com[/url] The tree owners were challenged by the event and simply outdid themselves!

Roy Wixson wrote:Here is one of the winners, one of the other winners is the azalea shown above. The forthcoming video will give you a TASTE of this past weekend but for education purposes and sheer enjoyment of bonsai trees from all over the United States and Canada everyone should place their order for the Exhibition Book at [/url]http://internationalbonsai.com[/url] The tree owners were challenged by the event and simply outdid themselves!

For those wondering, this prize winning black pine is by Scott Elser (winner of best conifer at both previous national shows). If he took best conifer at this one AGAIN that is incredible. He also had an incredible twin trunk mountain hemlock in the show.

Roy

It was nice seeing you at the show and I look forward to the video. I wonder if someone could post a list of the winning trees in all the categories.

One of the other treats was the tremendous range of artistic expression seen in all the companion plantings, many were excellent compositions in their own right.

-Jay

LSBonsai wrote:

Roy Wixson wrote:Here is one of the winners, one of the other winners is the azalea shown above. The forthcoming video will give you a TASTE of this past weekend but for education purposes and sheer enjoyment of bonsai trees from all over the United States and Canada everyone should place their order for the Exhibition Book at [/url]http://internationalbonsai.com[/url] The tree owners were challenged by the event and simply outdid themselves!

For those wondering, this prize winning black pine is by Scott Elser (winner of best conifer at both previous national shows). If he took best conifer at this one AGAIN that is incredible. He also had an incredible twin trunk mountain hemlock in the show.

From what i hear, this tree was styled by Ryan Neil and delivered to the current owner just before the show. The owner had not seen the tree in person until this past weekend. I guess the tree took the prize, not the owner

From what i hear, this tree was styled by Ryan Neil and delivered to the current owner just before the show. The owner had not seen the tree in person until this past weekend. I guess the tree took the prize, not the owner

Hi Carlos,
Please reveal the source of your rumor so we can correct the facts from the source of the misinformation.
Otherwise maybe you can delete your gossip from an otherwise outstanding thread.

carlos wrote:
From what i hear, this tree was styled by Ryan Neil and delivered to the current owner just before the show. The owner had not seen the tree in person until this past weekend. I guess the tree took the prize, not the owner

what does it matter who styled the tree? This is a tree competition (if you must only see it as a competition) ... regardless of who does the work it will always be the tree that is judged and therefore the tree that truly does the winning ... however the owners always and rightly deserve the awards for the trees ... that is the way of bonsai competitions

Bravo to the owner for showing yet another outstanding example ... as someone who's trees were also on display at the show I am filled with pride to know that the competition is growing and with it the quality with each passing year ...

Intersting how misinformation gets circulated. Zack and I drove the truck up to Ryan's place with the trees from Calif and were there a couple of days to transfer them to the larger truck heading east along with the Or & Wa enteries. Scott delivered his 2 trees to Ryan's place on Sat afternoon. I was admiring both of his trees and Ryan told me that Scott had worked on the pine at one of his workshops. That's a far cry from the "rumor" that was posted.

[quote="carlos"

From what i hear, this tree was styled by Ryan Neil and delivered to the current owner just before the show. The owner had not seen the tree in person until this past weekend. I guess the tree took the prize, not the owner [/quote]


I know Scott personally and I'd like to share what I know about the tree to set the story straight; I first remember this tree from Michael Hagedorn's study group as I joined when Scott was still a member. Scott did most all of the work on the tree himself and only occasionally Michael would set a branch or something like that. All the rest of the work, including balancing the energy of the tree and getting the needles a uniform size throughout the tree, was up to Scott. That aspect of what goes into a winning tree often gets overlooked and the quote above is so disrespectful, I can't believe it.

When Ryan Neil began to offer classes in our area, Scott took his pine to work on it with Ryan. I was not present at Ryan's when work was done on it but I can say with certainty that Ryan Neil alone didn't style that tree. Scott applied most all of the wire under Ryan's supervision and Ryan gave Scott some important tips and tricks, but at the end of the day, Scott did the bulk of the work. I hope this will quickly dispel the B.S. about Scott not seeing the tree in person until this past weekend. In fact the entire membership of the Bonsai Society of Portland got to see this tree at the Japanese Garden in Portland at our annual spring show last month, where it won People's Choice award as best conifer of that show!

As an aside, I always find it fascinating how photography skews the scale of a tree--this tree looks fairly small in the photo on this thread and in person it's really quite large--nearly three feet in height. The tree was imported from Japan and Scott bought it from Joe Harris, who has a nursery in Boring, Oregon. The front Scott and Ryan selected was at one time the back of the tree

carlos wrote: I guess the tree took the prize, not the owner

What a strange perception this is of a bonsai competition. The tree ALWAYS gets the prize. While so many try to make it a people's game it is about trees. It does not matter who made them, whether purchased or imported or collected or from seed or anything. All that counts is the tree.

carlos wrote:
From what i hear, this tree was styled by Ryan Neil and delivered to the current owner just before the show. The owner had not seen the tree in person until this past weekend. I guess the tree took the prize, not the owner

Junk like this shouldn't be posted.

-Jay

This was an excellent show full of top shelf trees and moreover was a gathering of some fun and talented individuals focused on making bonsai in the US better. Bill & his team deserve some very heartfelt thanks and congratulations from all of us.

A few of my trees were also on exhibition at this show and so, I feel compelled to challenge everyone to not respond to nonproductive gossip aimed at tarnishing a well done event. The trees were all great, the show has probably done more to raise the bar for all of us in the US and will be the start to many more excellent shows.

Carlos,
It is about the tree, so lets discuss the TREES.

Neil

I agree with Walter it's about the tree! On the other hand I think trees that should at least styled and maintained buy the presenter. I also think the leniage should be in account! But that's for others to handle, not here.

But most of all I dis like this "he said, she said" BS roumor starting! The show was a resounding success and American Bonsai quaility was lifted to a new exciting level! So why would anyone want to tarnish that. IMHO!

Maybe it should labeled JBP is the winner/ owned by .........

Mitch

It would be a shame if this otherwise great thread about a great show was spoiled by an ignorant (in both senses of the word) poster. I think the comments have made it clear what our opinion of his comments is - nuff said about it.

Are there any more show pics? It is good for those of us far away to see what is happening over there.




PS mebbe not go down the owner of vs creator of trees in exhibitions stuff either as we've been there and done that often enough on here. I should imagine there is nothing new anyone could add to that discussion.

One of the things I'd like to mention; in talking with several mambers of BSUNY who helped both set up AND tear down the exhibit, is the absolutely enourmous ammount of mental AND physical effort all these people put into a show of this magnitude and it goes off without a hitch....Just so well done.

One of the special moments for me was seeing the monster A. palmatum from the Montreal Botanical Garden on display. I visited there when I was 16 and it was my first exposure to bonsai. Many of those memories are still fresh in my mind, and there's a good bet I saw this particular Maple on that very first visit. Now here it was in Rochester and 20 years later.....we meet again!

-Jay

Cool story, Jay. It's funny how life goes/evolves, isn't it?

What a great weekend! The process of setting up, running, and taking down the show was quite exhausting - but also exhilarating. I too would like to see at least a list of all the award winners, somehow that never seemed to get distributed.

Now I have to go and re-introduce myself to my own trees...

Chris

P.S. One additional comment on the winning tree - the photo definitely does not do it justice - much more impressive in person. Beautiful trunk with remendous bark.

P.P.S. Couldn't take any photos of the actual exhibit, but did grab one shot of the Mitsuya/Shaner demo tree from Sunday, a coast redwood. Maybe someone else grabbed a shot of the juniper from Saturday.

I too would like to echo my admiration and appreciation to the exhibit setup/teardown crew. A huge amount of work that looked like it went off without the slightest hitch ! I helped Suthin tear down his booth, and I remember turning around and all of the backdrops were already down, and you could see clear across the building ! A great weekend of bonsai and fellowship. My eyes still "hurt" from studying so many beautiful trees....one after another !!

Ed

Here is a partial list of the winning trees as I remember them:
Scott's Elber's (sp) –Japanese Black Pine
Bob Shimon CoastRedwood (an amazing tree) - Best native
Mel Goldstein’s - Shohin display
Suthin Sokosolvisit's Japanese Maple - Best Deciduous
Mike Sullivan's Nea buxifolia- Best Tropical
A beautiful azalea - Yuji Yoshimura (Forgot name of winner)

However, talking of the winners only dilutes the message of the overall quality of the trees. There were literally hundreds of top notch tree nicely displayed. For example, it was so hard to select one tree for the BCI Excellence award that it went to Bill Valvanis for his overall work on the show. (well deserved I might add).

The international visitors all made similar favorable comments.
Considering that this was the third edition of the show and few trees have been repeated it speaks volumes about the quality of bonsai trees in the USA.

Bill Valvanis sells a book about the exhibition so photos were not allowed however we could take photos of our own set up. This is a cell phone shot of one of my displays prior to the opening - a Large willow leaf ficus and a semi-cascade buttonwood complement. It's a bit dark - sorry. Highly recommend buying the book (when it comes out) as the photo quality is excellent.



This is one of my co-riders trees, a Parsons juniper, by Pat Giacobbe.


A portion of the vendor area. It seemed the vendors did well - the customers were serious bonsai aficionados.