If you paint a picture — or write a story, or compose a piece of music, or assemble a collage, or choreograph a dance — you finish with it at some point and then the work stands as it is for the remainder of time anyone pays attention to it. Yes, sometimes the author of such a piece of creative work may go back to revisit it, to add or subtract or otherwise tweak what was done originally, but usually at some point the effort is considered complete.

Such a state of full resolution is never achieved in bonsai. Because of the living nature of the medium, creative work with any individual bonsai is ongoing for the duration of the bonsai’s existence. The fact that the bonsai is alive dictates that it will change. Life entails growth and decline, and both are expressed in transformation.

This reality can be frustrating for someone who works in the bonsai medium. Suppose you get your little tree to a state you believe to be perfection, or as close to perfection as you think you’re likely to get. If it were a painting of a tree you would now hang it on the wall. As a bonsai grower, you would be happy to have your bonsai tree stay just as it looks in this moment, when it embodies your vision of fully realized form. Too bad. Like it or not, for better or worse, that bonsai will inevitably look different ten or twenty years from now. If you are a very skillful bonsai grower working with an old, slow growing specimen, you may be able to minimize the degree to which the tree changes. A person less familiar with your bonsai might think it looks the same as ever over a span of ten or twenty years, but they would be mistaken. You may yourself think your bonsai has looked the same for as long as you’ve had it, but an honest look at a photograph of the tree from ten or twenty years ago will prove you wrong.

This reality that frustrates on one hand can be encouraging on the other. Resistance to change is usually wedded to fear that the change will be for the worse, resulting in a sort of fatalistic pessimism. This often will be more pronounced when people feel satisfied with what they have, as in the case of the person who thinks their bonsai has reached a state of perfection. But if you’re not satisfied with what you have, as in the case of a person who has a bonsai they think of as a problem child, then the inevitability of change represents a reason for hope.

Two facts have already been established regarding the Arboretum’s Chinese quince bonsai specimen: One, I was totally responsible for the tree’s design; Two, I was dissatisfied with the way the tree looked. Dissatisfaction inclined me to be favorably disposed toward changing the appearance of the tree. The fact that this was a specimen entirely of my own making meant there was nothing whatsoever to hold me back.

The following image was made in autumn of 2017:

Let’s use this image to try and explain what troubled me about this bonsai. First, here is the picture divided into quarters:

Now let’s look at just the upper half of the image, quadrants 1 and 2:

It can be observed that the greater portion of the tree’s canopy is found in quadrant 1. On the theory that visual movement tends to go from areas of greater mass to areas of lesser mass, the movement of the tree’s canopy is from left to right, or from quadrant 1 to quadrant 2.

This view can be confirmed by looking at the following image:

Although an argument might be made for reading the asymmetrical triangle that roughly outlines the shape of the canopy as visually moving from right to left, quadrant 2 to quadrant 1, such a shape is almost always going to be read the other way around, from 1 to 2. Think in terms of an arrow and it becomes more clear which way the shape is pointing.

Asymmetrical triangles are very important in bonsai, at least in the way bonsai is usually taught. The canopy of a bonsai is supposed to be shaped as an asymmetrical triangle. That, in fact, was why the quince had an asymmetrical triangular shape at this stage of its career — because I had been taught to think that way about bonsai design and I wanted to do it right.

When I looked at the canopy of this specimen I saw an element that was discordant with the idea that eye movement went from 1 to 2. Looking at the line of the trunk, it seemed to me its visual movement was more from 2 to 1. This led to what I thought was a plausible alternative way of reading the movement in the upper half of the tree, as illustrated in the next image:

Turning attention now to the lower half of the image, one noticeable aspect is that there is much less going on in quadrants 3 and 4. Elements that are not part of the bonsai — the wall behind it and the bench on which it sits — take up the greatest share of the space:

Another standard theory of visual effect holds that when greater mass sits atop lesser mass, the result is a sense of uncomfortable imbalance. The term usually applied is “top-heavy.”

Looking at the lowest portion of the trunk, the movement of it is both physically and visually from left to right, quadrant 3 to quadrant 4. However, at a certain point the trunk strongly shifts to the opposite direction, heading from 4 to 3. At the same exact point there is a heavy branch that moves in similar direction as the portion of trunk below it, creating a distinct “Y” shape:

Yogi Berra supposedly said, “When you get to a fork in the road, take it.” The quote is funny because in terms of movement, visual or otherwise, the problem posed by a “Y” shape is deciding which way to go. This feature in the lower portion of the bonsai causes visual confusion. When added to the visual confusion in the upper half of the tree, plus the top-heaviness in the relationship between the two halves, the result was dissatisfying. It was for me, anyway.

What might be done to correct this perceived incongruity?

Well, if you’re working with an image in Photoshop, you can do all sorts of things.

In the image below, the upper half of the image has been shifted to the right:

In analyzing the image it is necessary to ignore the disjointed trunk line. Focus instead on how the rightward shift brings the canopy into better relationship with the lower half of the tree. There is noticeably less confusion now about reading the movement of the canopy as being from left to right, quadrant 1 to quadrant 2.

As long as we’re going to move the canopy to the right, we might try lowering it a bit to see what that does:

Dropping the canopy down a little shortens the trunk by eliminating a sizable portion of the part that moved strongly to the left. This alteration has considerable positive effect, suggesting that the tree was too tall overall and probably too leggy, as well. It’s strange to look at that disappearing branch on the right, though.

We can fix that:

I trimmed a little off the left side of the canopy apex, as well, making more evident the movement of the foliage mass is from left to right. The result is a not-so-bad bonsai. It has a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster feeling to it, but overall the proportions are more agreeable than those of the bonsai we started with.

The image below depicts a simpler way to alter the tree to good effect:

In this version, the lower third of the tree, the portion just below the “Y”, has been flipped horizontally. That one alteration produces greater harmony in the trunk line and makes the overall visual movement of the tree easily discerned as being from right to left.

Bonsai problem solving in the virtual world is relatively fast and easy!

Bonsai problem solving in the real world is nothing like that. We can’t just move parts around or flip them as we please.

But the same virtual tool can also be used to visualize alterations that might be attainable in the real world. Here is an example:

In the above image, the large branch on the lower right side has been completely removed. The tree itself is otherwise exactly the same. The pot has been made smaller and the understory shrubbery has been reduced, in order to make those elements better relate to the image the tree now presents. This was a redesign option I seriously considered for a while. When I contemplate such possibilities I visualize them mentally, and it’s interesting to now see the results in more substantial form. Looking at the picture, I think this would have been an acceptable direction to have taken the bonsai. I didn’t choose to do it, though.

Before I share with you what did happen with this quince, I want to explain how the tree came to be shaped the way it was.

Here is a photograph of the quince made in May of 2012, the year this bonsai served as the Expo logo tree:

I chose this image for the following exercise because I think it represents the height of accomplishment for the tree as it was originally designed. For all its flaws, I thought the Chinese quince bonsai looked pretty good as it presented in 2012.

Here is the same photo with a bunch of lines and notations superimposed on it:

What does it all mean?

The blue line delineates the vertical center of the tree itself, not the center of the image. It also shows where the trunk of the tree begins at the base and ends at the apex.

The black lines divide the tree into vertical thirds.

The white line divides the tree in half horizontally. Again, this relates to the height of the tree itself and not the halfway mark of the total image.

The green line outlines the general shape of the canopy.

The pink numbers identify the function of the various branches: first branch, second branch, etc. “BB” indicates back branches.

This diagram illustrates the design scheme for this particular tree. It reflects what I was taught to do when building an informal upright bonsai, but not exactly.

In these particulars the design of the quince aligns with what I was taught to do:

The trunk line has varying movement, first to one side and then to another, in a repeating pattern from the base up to the apex. The trunk has taper its entire distance, with the widest segment being at the base.
The direction of the first movement of the trunk at its base is echoed in the final movement of the line at the apex.
The apex of the tree is located directly over the base (otherwise it would be a slanting form).
The branches are arranged in an alternating pattern, located first on one side of the trunk and then on the other as they ascend toward the apex. Back branches give the tree a sense of depth. No branches come forward toward the viewer until the upper third of the tree, allowing for an open look into the interior of the composition.
The first branch appears one-third of the way up the trunk line and is the most prominent branch on the tree.
The canopy is shaped to form an asymmetrical triangle in outline.

In one prominent aspect the design of the tree is at variance with how I was taught to train bonsai: The branches do not descend. I was taught that branches on bonsai should be trained to grow downwards, in order to suggest an old tree. At the time when I designed this quince bonsai I had already come to recognize that branches on big deciduous trees in nature, even old ones, do not all descend. Some lower branches on some individual trees of some species in some situations do descend, sometimes even to the point of touching the ground. But those same trees will almost certainly have other branches that are more or less horizontal and others, particularly near the top, that ascend.

On some trees, all branches ascend to some degree or another. Such was the case with many of the gnarly old chestnut oaks on the dry ridgetop that were the inspiration for the original design of this quince bonsai. In my quest to emulate the look of those oaks, I purposefully allowed the branches of the quince to have an ascending nature, but in all other regards I stuck closely to the bonsai design guidelines as they had been taught to me. It turned out to be a rough mix.

To be continued…

The Problem Child - Part 2