AABC 2009, Brisbane

[Chris Di Nola]

HI Guys

I was one of those 2 interstate guys doing the demo on the junipers the other one was Ian Lawson from Qld, very nice bloke & Bill was great.

Anyways heres a few pics of the tree that I styled, hope you all like it let me know.

My club, Illawarra Bonsai Society will be holding the next one so I hope you all can make it & yes it will be Salvatore Liporace as the headliner & Grant Bowie the supporting guest, to be held at Bankstown Sports Club. Ill post a link when I can.

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[LLK]

Hello all,
Below are some photos I took at the AABC Seminar in Brisbane. As stated earlier, it was a great event. The Bonsai Society of Queensland, and especially Tony Bebb and the other members of the organising committee, deserved the long and loud applause they got at the closure ceremony. There were 248 participants which, apart from AABC 2005 with Kimura, is the highest number reached so far at an AABC Seminar. The venue, too, was a success. The Saturday gala dinner for ex. was genuinely fine dining; I don't know how they managed it, with so many guests. One funny thing was that it's a rule of the hotel that no table shall be covered with anything except white tablecloths. While they made a concession with the demo table, which boasted black cloth on white, the workshops took place on spotless white.
First, here are a few pics of the first demo, which was Tony Bebb's. His tree, at the start, must have been one of the ugliest I've ever seen. If I remember correctly, he said that it was a Foemina juniper, i.e. Juniperus chinensis 'Foemina'.
Please excuse the poor quality of the photos.

Lisa

[LLK]

Next was Bill Valavanis' demo. His material consisted of a Japanese black pine.
To do justice to the transformation here, close-up photography was needed and we couldn't get close enough to the platform during the work.
Bill provided a lot of information, spiced with anecdotes of his bonsai experiences, which kept the audience glued to their seats right to the end. One of the things that surprised me was, when he asked at what time of the year we repot our JBPs, which is usually at the end of Winter or thereabouts, he said, "I like to repot mine in Summer". Gee, in Summer! I never heard that before.

[LLK]

The bonsai exhibition was absolutely first class. Bill Valavanis said during a demo that he was very impressed by it, which is a big compliment indeed.
Conditions were not ideal for photography, I'm sorry to say. Well, I took a few pics and hopd for the best.
And that's it for today.

Lisa

[anttal63]

lisa thanks so much for the pics. a great result from both those great artists! fantastic to hear its been a success. certainly sounds like it was a hoot!

[stymie]

Tony Bebb had a stinker to start with and I am still unimpressed by the after photo. Sorry if this is rather beastly comment but I have received the impression that Oz people are blunt and appreciate candour.
The pics of the shown items are 'dinkum' (If that's how you spell it) I nearly didn't post this out of character item.

[LLK]

anttal, you're welcome.

Don, no worries. You're entitled to your opinion and yes, we appreciate a straightforward comment. Personally, I think that Tony's juniper ended up quite interesting, but then I saw it live, which makes a big difference. Tony only had an hour, so no time for refinement or repotting. Knowing his work, however, I am sure that a few years down the track it will be a great bonsai.

Lisa

[anttal63]

yes at first glance i thought it was a bit ordinary. his carving is very nice in the detail. and i can see that in the future this tree will find its groove. as don said the starting material was a dog, that only someone like bebb could take through to the other end. i hope that somewhere down the track the final result can be seen somewhere. hey bebb what about here on AUS BONSAI.COM

[DavidN]

Thanks Lisa for the photos. Much appreciated that you took the time to do this. Love the trees in the display area. That large pine is a real beauty (very cute girl too).

Our club will be hosting Tony Bebb in a few months time and I will be trying to source stock for him to be working on. I'll be sure to find something that he will need to do a lot of carving on.

Lisa, Admittedly I'm a bit shocked that the pine Bill did pulled in $3000 at auction. If you were at the Melbourne convention in 07 the Persiano juniper I believe was much better than this pine and it only pulled $900.

[Mojo Moyogi]

Don, be as blunt as you like mate. I have to agree with you, Bebbs Juniper looked very sub-par both before and after. I personally think that some of the trees dished up to demonstrators are woeful, this is not an exclusively Australian phenomenon. It's is a terrible waste of talent and it's not like we have international demonstrators lining up to be invited down to Australia.

Tony Bebb can't be faulted for attempting to do something positive with a tree that he wouldn't have bought for himself on a bad day.

David, I'd buy the '07 convention Juniper for $900 any day and I wouldn't necessarily have paid $900 for the JBP that Bill Val worked on.

Lisa, I really like the big Black Pine (with the girl in the photo). I think a larger pot would improve it though, what do you think.


Jason

[Asus101]

The juniper Tony had to work on here in SA for our host, was similar in quality.

[jamo]

Tony Bebb can't be faulted for attempting to do something positive with a tree that he wouldn't have bought for himself on a bad day.

The tree that Tony worked on in Brisbane was his own material. He didn't go into too much detail on the day except to say that the tree had sentimental value to him. Carving out a section of the tree, jinning it and then attaching it back to the tree in a different orientation is a pretty far out concept. I think the only down side was that he couldn't shape the foliage that remained. In his words, to do that would have placed too much stress on the tree that may very well have killed it.

[Leigh Taafe]

Masterpieces are never made in an hour. Lets see the tree again given another 5 years.

Cheers,
Leigh.

[Mojo Moyogi]

Interesting that Tony's tree was his own, I'm not sure that changes my feelings about it one way or the other. I think it is the straight-curved-straight trunk that bothers me the most. Lets see the Juniper that skippy styled in 5yrs time.

Cheers,
Jase

[Joel]

Sorry if i missed this, but how did he attach the wood upside down?

JayC