Burrs 2011 and so it begins

Pavel, Mirek, Kuba, Graham and I took a short yamadori trip yesterday. In a couple of hours we will be collecting Carlos van der Varrt and Nik Rozman from Manchester Airport and then we will be off to the wilds of Wales. If time permits I will post some more photos as the weekend progresses.

Looking forward to meeting everyone at the Burrs weekend later!

Your heading into my territory of North Wales!??

Bryan

I'll take the first opportunity to Thank Tony for a brilliant weekend at Burrs.....

Being enthused by the Artists and like minded people, I found it to be a fantastic experience. They'll be a steady flow of pictures flooding in to this post You can be sure of that.

The Start to finish production line of trees, Raw and Re-styled trees was phenomenal...

As the weekends now came to a close, a reflection........ Great weekend, great gathering of people, and an honour to work with one of the IBC's best pine experts Pavel.

Cheers Tony!!!!!!!

360 of the Room

P.s .... Time to get the memory card in the computer and find some pictures to share[url=

The gang's all here!



Lots more to follow, tomorrow. Thanks once again for an excellent event Tony and all the artists. It was a real pleasure to attend.

looks like the scare floor from monsters inc! (one or two exceptions of course)

bigsteve wrote:looks like the scare floor from monsters inc! (one or two exceptions of course)

I agree last years picture did look better hahaha

Peter

Yet another wonderful Burrs weekend is over.
Many thanks to Tony for the organisation, to Bob and Steve (Harleyrider) for all the work they put in before, during and after the event.
A very special thanks to Carolyn for the food, superb as usual.
Not forgetting the artists, especially for travelling great distances to be with us, wonderful talent.
It was good to meet up with long standing friends and make new ones

Still recovering, but looking forward to next year's event

Thanks
Graham

Really missed the event this year and spent all weekend with BURRS blues. Glad you all had a ball guys n gals.

All the. Est

Andy

For me, the weekend was about enhancing my experience in working with Pine. The opportunity to work with Pavel and some of his fantastic Yamadori from concept to finish was just outstanding:

The Yamadori:-
Collected by Pavel in 2008 and looked after for 4 growin seasons.



We then talked about the concept, and what the possibilities were. He then grabbed a sketch pad and proceeded to Draw and amazing concept drawing for me to work towards!



Needle prune and tidying of branches.



Raffia and insulation tape for the major branches, and wiring everything to the tip. Being careful of the important back buds



In-experience has me put the wrong thickness of wire to the lighter branches, after a brief talking too by Pavel see's me removing the wiring and taking me another 2hrs into the Midnight Hour to do it all over again! After finishing this, folk starting returning back in from the pub.

"COME ON Bryan" Pavel shouts, "lets do this!!"



Bend - Refine - Bend - Refine - HORROR and shock when he says "NO NO....." shaking his head looking for something. "too many Branches!" ..... SNIP SNIP, off come two unwated branches. I turned to look at Mirek who was sat watching with me, he made a small smile, and a slight shrug of the shoulder!! (Priceless!)

100% TRUST



The Finished Project - And a HUGE thank you to Pavel:-



BRYAN

hELLO , EVERYBODY

oN mANCHESTER AIRPORT , WITH wIEK
Waiting to Fly home !!

Wonderfull Burrs , good shopping , and it was such a superb Weekend !!

Thank ALL burrsies , so much to make it all happen again.
More in a day or two when we are home !!

OOOOHHH Carolyn , YES !!!
Gelly beans are in my handbag to go to the Netherlands !!!!

Love for all
Morea and Wiek

Superb weekend of Bonsai once again !

Thanks to Tony, Carolyn, Steve and Bob for all their hard work organing the event and feeding us all weekend.

For me it was great to see people I haven't seen since the same event last year: Chris T, Graham W, Steve, Bob, Faisal, Andrew and Paul S.

Lots of new people met for the first time: Bryan, Mikey, Peter M, Anthony, Malcolm, Kev B and the very talented Nik Rozman, it was great to meet you all.

One of the highlights of the weekend for me was to meet Will Baddeley and witness first hand his skill at carving. Superb !

Special thanks to Pavel, Kuba and Mirek it was nice to meet you all again. Thank you for the small pots. My son (age 5) has claimed the baseball cap you gave me

Thanks to Terry Foster. Top notch styling and refining of some trees over the weekend, I especially liked the small literati Juniper and Faisal's tiny Yew.

It was an honour to meet Carlos and watch him style trees, an amazing artist and very genuine guy.

Finally, after naming and thanking nearly everyone who attended, my biggest thanks go to my friends from Holland - Morea and Wiek, it really was special to meet you both again, I enjoyed our time together and the laughs we had. I hope we can meet again next year.

Morea - thank you so much for the pot you brought for me. I will post a photo when I have it planted in the summer.

Burrs is a lot about trees and techniques, but also about friendship and meeting people. If bonsai had a festival circuit Burrs would definately be the GlastonBURRSy

I'll post some photo's when I get them off the camera and have caught up on sleep.

Sleep is probably the only thing you dont get enough of at Burrs.....

Hi all friends
Today, after midnight, they arrived home we have. Again I will long remember the wonderful weekend with you all at Burrs. You are great.

Gretings Pavel

Although I was not at this fantastic event, here's my attempt at an Ode to Burrs:

I think I've got too much time on my hands,
Ook, Ook,
Simon

Good evening viewers. Apologies for not posting sooner, I've been catching up on some elusive post-Burrs shuteye.
Anyhoo, without further ado, here's a few pics of the comings and goings of (for me) the best Burrs yet. I mean c'mon, as if having Tony, Terry, Pavel, Carlos and Will on hand wasn't enough, the fact that Nik Rozman was also in the house (not as an artist but as a paying customer!) says much about this event. Add to that little group Mirek, Chris and a smattering of New Talent winners and finalists (you know who you are) and you get some idea of the knowledge and skills we had on tap.

Big thanks as always to Tony and Carolyn, Bob, all the artists, old hands and newbies. You all contributed to an amazing experience. My special thanks go to Pavel (for looking after my trees and delivering them safely, along with a few 'extras') and especially to my friend Mirek Skrabal for giving me the most amazing gift, and then taking the time to turn it into something extra special.
Oh, and Will, for being a worthy opponent in our regular games of verbal abuse tennis. New balls please!

Mirek's gift to me, a cracking Mugo Pine from his own garden. Before wiring and styling....


....and a few hours later...1st styling complete.


A few random shots of the weekends' shenannigans, starting with one of Bob's little Junipers..


Andy took great delight in testing everyone's soil pH with his new toy, whether they wanted it or not!


Paul spent hours unravelling and gently scraping the old raffia from his windswept Juniper raft, only to be told by Pavel to replace it with new stuff. My, how he laughed.


Chris brought this Scot's Pine in so Pavel could show him his technique for getting extreme bends done quickly and safely...


Here it is again about an hour later and half the size...


A close-up of the bend with accompanying scaffolding. Impressive, eh?


Pavel and Will discussing my tree? Who'da thunk it!


Mirek, hard at work.


The usual suspects. Tony, Carlos, Pavel, Will and Terry. Pavel is entertaining the crowd with his Peter Crouch dance routine.


Nik Rozman, pondering the tree that Tony gave him to style.


After much consideration (and a few false starts with a misfiring burner), this is what he came up with. Niiiiice!




The Welsh lads always bring some special trees, and this year was no exception. Here's Paul's amazing Pine. I covet this tree.


How's that for a nebari! Impressive or what.


How often do you get to watch an artist of Pavel's skill at such close quarters, let alone ask him questions as he works? Every year at Burrs!


A new feature this year was the artists walking around the room en masse to discuss everyone's trees, offering their own unique styling suggestions and their reasons for it. Again, questions from the audience were encouraged.




I'm afraid I have to leave it there for now, folks. Time draws on and I have a 4:30am appointment with the alarm clock. I'll be back tomorrow with lots more pics and witty insights into this years' big weekender.