Most clubs hold bonsai show once or twice a year. Typically the shows are formal with bonsai on stands, some accompanied by kusamono or scrolls against backdrops, some even have judging and awards for best trees.
For the last few years our club has held informal shows at the Houston Japanese Garden in conjunction with the Japanese Festival, and most recently at a local shopping mall. The number of visitors are phenomenal. We brought 1,300 copies of our club brochures to these two shows, and they were all gone. We estimated at least two thousand people saw our shows, and we also recruited several new members! Such an exposure of bonsai art to a wide audience is not easy to achieve in a formal show.
To me, the most gratifying reward participating in these informal shows is to see the joys these little trees brought to our visitors, many of them saw bonsai for the first time; their reactions, from curiosities to fascinations, the questions and amount of photos they took, made all the volunteering efforts worthwhile. Here are some of the heart warming photos from this year’s shows:
Spring Show at the Japanese Garden
Beautiful sunny spring day and the Japanese Festival brought a lot of visitors to the Japanese Garden.
“Are these special kind of trees?”, “How old is the tree?”, “What kind of tree is it?” These were frequent questions asked by visitors. We like questions, it meant we had piqued their interests.
Pete Parker explaining how he worked on a Yaupon bonsai. An interested visitor picked up our club brochure. We brought 800 copies to the spring show and they were gone by the next afternoon.
A demo by Soon Cheah, Best Kusamono winner of the 2016 US National Bonsai Show. A lot of visitors were fascinated by these cute little plants, and drew comments like: “These are weeds…I have a lot of them in my garden”, “I didn’t know weeds could be so beautiful…”
Who knows these two little girls might get into bonsai in the future from this encounter?
A senior couple closely examined the root-over-rock Melon Seed Ficus to convince themselves there was indeed a rock beneath those roots.
Flowering bonsai like this bougainvillea always draw oohs and aahs. Glad to see these happy faces.
No doubt they really liked this small Japanese Black Pine.
Mmm.. This does look like a big banyan tree.
Fall Show at the Memorial City Mall:
Seeing these loving senior couple enjoying our show filled me with warm joy. The lady took her time enjoying every tree and her husband was always a step behind her. Don’t you want to grow old together just like them?
Another couple enjoying this South Texas native, a Fiddlewood bonsai with berries.
Many people got close to smell the fragrance of this flowering Water Jasmine.
A lady told me she had seen this type of tree somewhere in California when she saw this wind-swept Yaupon. I asked: “Monterey?”, and she immediately said “Yes!”
A happy family stopped by the show.
The Mall has such a huge traffic, some people just walked by without even looking at the bonsai, some would stop, enjoy and ask questions.
So many visitors became interested in bonsai, over 60 people signed up Timeless Trees’ mailing list! And a couple joined Timeless Tree’s workshop the following weekend.
Bonsai clubs do have a mission to educate and promote the art. I feel these informal displays at high-traffic places are great ways to achieve this mission.
Will your club start doing this kind of show catering to the general public?
We thank the American-Japan Society for inviting us to participate in the Japanese Festival, and the Houston Memorial City Mall Management allowing us to use the mall facilities; and many thanks to our volunteers.
