Bonsai

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Photography

Trails of Light Illuminate Sculptural Bonsai Trees in Vitor Schietti’s Long-Exposure Photographs

Cultivated for centuries in Japan, bonsai originated in China at least 4,000 years ago, treasured as symbols of balance and harmony and admired for their aesthetic beauty. Vitor Schietti’s ongoing project Impermanent Sculptures continues to tap into the strength of the trees in a photographic series of illuminated specimens.

Long-exposure shots capture bright streams from sparklers that contrast against deep, dark backgrounds and speak to the relationship between the immediacy of light, the ephemerality of the photograph, and the enduring nature of the lifeforms. “The small-scale representation of their grown, natural counterparts allow my strokes of sparkles to reach further through the trees’ shapes,” Schietti explains. Bonsai provide an opportunity to illuminate what he describes as the “soul, the source of life,” of these living forms, sharing that the process of creating and tending to one of the miniature botanical specimens reveals a unique human connection to nature.

You can find more of Schietti’s work on his website and Instagram.

 

 

 

Art

Bonsai Tree and Sea Creature Sculptures Crafted from Blown Glass by Simone Crestani

Glass artist Simone Crestani uses borosilicate glass with a lampworking technique to create detailed glass sculptures. Each piece imitates imperfect organic forms such as twisting Japanese bonsai trees or lopsided coral. Bonsai is an ongoing theme Crestani often returns to, and views as being a base of his studio practice. “The bonsai is a concentration of life, it overcomes the barrier of size and expresses strength and energy; it is a work of art that is never finished, in which nature continues to develop and evolve,” he explains on his website. “I shape the [glass], but the end result has an identity of its own. I help it to grow, and wait until it gives me an indication of the equilibrium that will allow it to express itself.” You can see more of his glass-based designs, which also include bubbles, bugs, and unusual glasses, on Instagram. (via designboom)

Design

Air Bonsai: Levitating Magnetic Bonsai Trees by Hoshinchu

Despite the visual beauty and life-giving nature of plants, there’s always been one main problem with our vegetative friends: plants can’t fly. A small company called Hoshinchu based out of Kyushu, Japan, recently set out to fix the problem that evolution forgot by inventing the Air Bonsai, a system for magnetically levitating small bonsai trees several inches above a small electrified pedestal. The system allows you to create your own miniature Avatar-like worlds with tiny trees or shrubs planted in balls of moss, but is also powerful enough to suspend special ceramic dishes of fragments of lava rock.

Air Bonsai is currently funding like crazy on Kickstarter and is availble in a number of configurations starting with a base DIY kit for $200 that requires you to use your own plants up to more elaborate designs that may only ship in Japan. (via Spoon & Tamago)

Design

Ultra Small Bonsai Plants Give New Meaning to the Word Miniature

What happens when you apply of love of small things to an art form that’s already all about small things? In recent years Bonsai—Japan’s art form of growing miniature trees in miniature planters—has undergone a miniaturization trend. Industry experts consider bonsai plants less than 3 cm (about 1 inch) to be particularly difficult, but artists have taken on the challenge, creating tiny plants and tiny planters that, literally, are at your fingertips. It’s given rise to a new category, known as cho-mini bonsai, or ultra-small bonsai.

It’s no secret that the Japanese excel at making things smaller, whether it’s automobiles, electronics or food. In fact, Japan’s love of small things can be found in literature dating back over a 1,000 years. When it comes to the land of the rising sun, it’s clear that beauty comes in small packages.