Episode #22 Aarin Packard & The Pacific Bonsai Museum

[00:00:00] Speaker A: To baby trees. Bon. Bonsai. Bonsai. Bonsai. [00:00:11] Speaker B: The Black Pondo Podcast. Bonsai. [00:00:14] Speaker A: Bonsai. Bonsai. [00:00:15] Speaker B: Bonsai. [00:00:16] Speaker A: Bonsai. Bonsai. [00:00:18] Speaker B: The Black Pondo Podcast. Great. Well, hey, Aaron, thank you so much for the time today. I really, really appreciate it, you allowing me to come out after hours and took me around in the cold. So I really, really appreciate it. Thank you so much. [00:00:34] Speaker A: Yeah, it was great that it was able to work out that you were able to pop down here, having never been to the museum before. So that's always happy to do that. I know we've met a little bit while ago. I was trying to recall, did we meet at Rochester or do we meet at the Pacific Expo? The first one. [00:00:48] Speaker B: Where did. [00:00:49] Speaker A: Where did we first meet? [00:00:50] Speaker B: I think the first time I met you was at the Rochester show. [00:00:54] Speaker A: Yeah, I believe so. We've known each other for four or five years or so, I think. [00:00:59] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:01:00] Speaker A: So I was happy to hear you reach out. [00:01:02] Speaker B: Yeah, I was bummed I didn't see you at the Pacific Bonsai Expo. [00:01:06] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, me too. We had a tree, which I think if you had to pick and choose, you probably would rather see the tree than me, as I would, but it was just kind of the nature of the beast with staffing. But one of our other, my coworker Brock, who's a super enthusiastic guy, he was the one willing to drive the tree down from Seattle to Oakland. And I would have said yes to that maybe 10 years ago, but yeah, I done enough of the long driving of bonsai to be like, let someone else have that fun experience and represent the museum. So, unfortunately, didn't make it this time, but heard it was a wonderful show and hopefully we'll be at the next one for sure. [00:01:46] Speaker B: Nice. Yeah, I feel like a couple of my least favorite things about bonsai are transporting bonsai and spraying bonsai, I would say. [00:01:56] Speaker A: So I get that it's a skill to know how to transport trees, especially long distances. You know, to know how to pack them, to know how to protect them, to know how to con sort of consider the impact of road vibration over hundreds and hundreds of miles. And so, yeah, it's. And then it's just the. It's the truck driver mentality of just long haul. You gotta get there, set up, and then turn around and do it all over. So. So, yeah, no, it's fun when you're young, but. And thankfully, we've got some great staff who are willing to do that for us. [00:02:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I met Brock. Super nice guy. [00:02:33] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:02:34] Speaker B: And that's incredible that he drove all that way. And the Korean Hornbeam looked absolutely awesome. [00:02:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Thank you so much. Yeah, we were super happy to participate. The first PvE was really fun. We got to do something a little bit more avant garde and that was the plan for this year. But the. The trees that we looked at, the concrete container ones, that was the plan to do something with those for this current expo. But the timing didn't quite line up in terms of how they were repotted this spring. And then, you know, if you're going to do something a little bit more avant garde, you want to make sure the quality of the tree is like really great so that people can't really dog it for quality. And so maybe in two years they'll be a little bit more ready for showtime. So that was the plan, but so we sent a backup, which was the Hornbeam. Thankfully, we've got a lot of good backups to pull from our benches. Pretty deep. [00:03:33] Speaker B: You absolutely do. [00:03:34] Speaker A: Yes, for sure. [00:03:36] Speaker B: Awesome. Well, that's fantastic. And I think I heard that the next PBE will be in January 2026. Or at least that's the rumor that I've been hearing. [00:03:46] Speaker A: Haven't heard that yet. So I'll keep my ears out for that. So there it's moving from fall to winter. [00:03:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:03:53] Speaker A: Yeah. Which. [00:03:54] Speaker B: What do you think about that? I think it's kind of cool. [00:03:56] Speaker A: Yeah. It probably makes it a little bit easier for people to hard to transport trees when they're actively growing. You know, like watering requirements are much, much higher. It's a little bit easier for a tree to be inside for a week and not be super affected by the climate or the lack of sunlight or the temperature. So, yeah, what I think I like about what Eric and Jonas are doing is they're not sticking with a formula which they're continually trying new venues, they're taking now new time. So, yeah, I think that's a great approach and not necessarily just becoming comfortable with kind of the. It's easier to do it. I mean, it's not easy, but it is. It's a little bit easier. So anyway, kudos to them for continuing to evolve. Evolve the show. So I'm excited to see what happens in January. [00:04:51] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. No, that's fantastic. Yeah, it's great that they are taking the feedback in and looking at the show and then continuing to evolve it. One interesting note was now tokatake, which we're discussing earlier. He. He actually took some statistical analysis regarding the judging results. [00:05:13] Speaker A: Oh, interesting. [00:05:14] Speaker B: And one thing that just sticks Out. And he posted this on the Bonsai Nut forum. Okay. But it was interesting because I. I feel like in order to do a good fall show, they needed to make sure that the trees arrive with nice fall color. [00:05:29] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:05:30] Speaker B: You know, and so one point that now showed was that basically trees that were in leaf didn't do as good as trees without their leaves in the show. [00:05:40] Speaker A: Sure. [00:05:41] Speaker B: And he was showing that through his analysis and breakdown. So I think. I think it'll be good that they're pushing it to. All trees will be without leaves. All deciduous trees. [00:05:52] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's, you know, the challenges of fall color, especially on the west coast of the US Is a little bit harder to manage. Right. And for us here in the Northwest, it's even. It's. It's a different challenge, but it is as challenging. And so, you know, our corn, we actually, when we went by the hornbeam when we were walking through, it still has its leaves on, and it's actually like kind of the tail end of fall color. And the expo was what, a month plus ago, and so it had just kind of started showing a little. And so you kind of have this like fading summer color, which is not as nice, and no real strong fall color, which is nice. So then the question is defoliation. Seems like it's the next thing, which is, you know, I sort of became somewhat infamous for the Japanese beach that we showed at the Artisans cup of defoliating that in the fall. And. Yeah, that was pretty striking, you know, to say the least. [00:06:55] Speaker B: Yeah, most definitely. [00:06:56] Speaker A: So, yeah, it'll be good to see the turnout in the winter for sure. [00:07:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. [00:07:02] Speaker A: More statistics for now to pass. [00:07:05] Speaker B: Most definitely. Yeah. And then we get some more variety. Like, I love ume, so hopefully we can get some blooming Ume, you know, in January. I'm not sure. Do they bloom around January, do you think? [00:07:16] Speaker A: Well, up here it tends to be fem. Maybe. [00:07:20] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:20] Speaker A: Maybe even early January. We're a little bit earlier. So, like our repotting season. I know. I don't know about California that well, but we'll. We can start repotting in January or late January, early February, at least for our trees that are greenhoused. [00:07:33] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:07:34] Speaker A: So it's a much more gradual ramp up. Whereas on the east coast in D.C. it was much more very dramatic. Kind of flip, the flip, the switch on the temperature. You would go from, you know, kind of winter and then spring and have a continually consistent progression of temperature. Whereas here we can, you know, we can still have low temperatures through June and July. So it's a much more gradual kind of arc of growth. So you have a bigger window to do that work. But it's also, you're sort of limited in all that happens within that window. It's harder to control how wide of range of temperatures you get. You get a very warm spring, very cool summer, you know. So anyway, long story short is, yeah, it's hard to nail it with fall color, at least on the West Coast. [00:08:20] Speaker B: Most definitely. Most definitely. Awesome. Well, I was hoping to back up just a little bit. Would you give me just an overview on the Pacific Bonsai Museum for anyone that maybe hasn't come here before? What can you expect when you come here? [00:08:36] Speaker A: Sure, absolutely. Yeah. So, just for introductions, my name is Aaron Packard. I'm the curator of the Pacific Bonsai Museum. We're officially located in Federal Way, Washington, and that's basically between Tacoma and Seattle. And we are a public, not for profit bonsai museum that has been in operation since 1989. We originally started as a public collection as part of the Weyerhaeuser Lumber Company, which is basically whose former headquarters were on. Their global headquarters are based here in Federal Way. And as part of their sprawling 400 plus acre campus, they have this. They created this small bonsai collection which was for the benefit of the public to come and access for free, as well as to kind of acknowledge their Asian trading partners. And so then it was known as the Weyerhaeuser Pacific Rim Collection. And it was headed by David de Groot, who was here from their first curator from 1989 up until 2014 when I was hired. And so Dave was really the one who took the Pacific Rim Collection and put it on the map and kind of established a standard for what our reputation sort of is today. Largely because he was here for the majority of that time. 30 plus 35 years or so. And was it 35? Yeah, more or less. And so we're now a nonprofit that was spun off by the corporation, and we now are an independent nonprofit. So we fundraise, we know, seek out donations. We are dependent on the support of the community at large and locally to keep us going. And so my job is to basically continue Dave's work as sort of the person who's responsible for the horticultural and artistic maintenance of the collection, at least where the bonsai are concerned. So all of the work that is performed here, we perform on site. We perform that primarily with the use of staff as well as with dedicated volunteers. So very similar to, you know, any other major bonsai collection like Lake Merritt or Huntington or D.C. you know, you have a kind of a dedicated staff that's there day in and day out and then your volunteers that are coming in and assisting with that. We have about 150bonsai and there's about 60 or so on view. And they're curated around major exhibitions. That part of my other background as a curator is. My educational background is in museums, formal museums, exhibition design, collections management, those sorts of things. I was planning on being more of a traditional curator at like a cultural art museum or fine art museum and just did bonsai as a hobby. And so what I bring to the job is that background of taking our collection and using it like a museum would use their paintings and their other art objects and mounting exhibitions that are trying to educate the visitors, not just or to showcase the work. You're not just going though to look at the painting and say how pretty it is, which it is. You want to understand who the painter was, what they were thinking when they painted it, why are they important. And then, you know, pairing it with objects that relate to each other that sort of reinforce an overall narrative or sort of information that you're trying to convey. Using the objects as your sort of vehicles to teach people about whatever. It could be about the object or it could be about something else. So that's, that's it kind of in a nutshell. I mean there's also the grounds and the facilities. So those are the non sexy things of like making sure the, the plumbing's working and the, you know, the irrigation is operational and our greenhouses are running. So a lot of facilities, a lot of facilities, facilities maintenance, grounds maintenance that you would see in any other sort of like public facility is also sort of under my responsibility. And then again, staff, we all work together to execute our mission. [00:13:09] Speaker B: Fantastic. Yeah, I was very impressed coming out here for the first time. And I didn't realize that there was such a beautiful forest basically that surrounds the bonsai collection. [00:13:23] Speaker A: Yeah, I think one of the things that sets us apart from the public collections is the environment that we're in. And most public collections, they're a part of a larger public garden or arboretum. What makes us unique is we're kind of a standalone, you know, sort of organization. And we're sort of nestled in this very classic Doug fir forest, second growth stand of Pacific Northwest sort of iconic trees. And so when you come here, we're not sort of in a city center or kind of in this sort of maybe open, sort of airy place. You feel like you're In a forest because we are sort of surrounded in this way. And so it sort of creates this really special sort of pairing of. You see these like 150 foot tall Doug firs juxtaposed next to the bonsai. And so it's kind of like you've stumbled across this sort of magical little collection of miniature trees. And there's. There's kind of this really fun interplay between the forest, the natural forest and the bonsai kind of in the same, you know. Vista is really cool. [00:14:35] Speaker B: That's gorgeous. I love it. Yeah, very nice. I need to come back when it's a little brighter out, right? [00:14:42] Speaker A: Yeah. See more than by flashlight, but yeah, yeah. And I think the design too as well, for people who haven't been here, the layout is in sort of these alcoves that are sort of progressing through this sort of meandering, sort of circular path that you sort of loop back on itself. But the structure of the design of the exhibition or the design of the display space is unique because it's not the traditional monkey poles or sort of linear benches. It doesn't take. It's minimalist and so maybe taking some Japanese aesthetic cues, but there's also not a whole lot of cultural reference to Japan in the design of the garden. It's very modern or it's almost like art gallery esque. And so we sort of describe it as an open air art gallery where you have a lot of space dedicated to each tree. It kind of sits in its own table, has a lot of sort of negative space around it and really sort of allows it to kind of exist kind of by itself. Like you would see a sculpture or a painting. And I think just kind of that layout of sort of these sort of rooms, one room after another, so to speak, creates a kind of a cool sense of discovery as you're sort of like seeing what's around the next corner. You don't quite see it until you kind of arrive there. So yeah, this being designed in the late 80s, the design has really, I think, held up over time. [00:16:03] Speaker B: Yeah, fantastic. So I saw the trees that were on display here today. Do you have additional trees in another area? [00:16:14] Speaker A: Yeah. So we have. Just like any museum, most museums don't display all of their collection at once, the majority of which is actually off view. You only see a small portion of most museums collections. And so we have an additional grow space, grow yard that houses the bulk of the collection. So the other 2/3 of the trees are off view. And those are off view for a variety of reasons. Either they're just not in the current exhibition for whatever sort of curatorial reason they don't fit, or they're being kind of worked on, or they're sort of in various stages of development. And so we will try to cycle trees out to one. If you come multiple times, you're not going to see the same tree and the same bench. You know, it becomes a little redundant at that point. So you want to. We'll have a lot of our kind of iconic trees on view, but part of the curation is to move them around, to have them in different locations, but also to maintain their horticultural needs. Not every tree is going to work in every position because we do have a lot of tall trees that are going to create shade or things like that. And so in order to maintain this collection, we will sort of rotate them out to sort of create seasonal interest. Things in flower, things in fruit that are that time of the year. And so we have kind of a section that we can be a little bit more, at least in the display. There's a sort of a separate section of tree of tables that functions as more of like a seasonal offering. And then the main tables are sort of for the curated exhibition for that year. [00:17:48] Speaker B: Great. How do you, how does the museum obtain trees primarily? [00:17:54] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a great question. So at this point, we're open to donation as a non profit. We really are seeking people to donate trees. And, you know, we are fairly successful at acquiring trees through donation. You know, usually a lot of people will enjoy the process of working on trees, bring them to a state of high sort of refinement and exhibit them. And after that, it's not to say that there's nothing left to do, but the work between development and refinement are different. And so a lot of the bulk of our trees are in the refinement stage. Right. It's that finishing or it's the maintenance. It's the continuation of this established design and maturity. And while it's not easy, it's also maybe not what people enjoy about taking a piece of raw material and styling it and kind of building the tree. It's. That's fun. And then it's kind of like someone flipping a house. Like once it's been flipped, they're on to the next one. And so a lot of people will donate a tree that's reached that pinnacle and they're kind of like, yeah, I've had it, I've exhibited it. Like now we're just kind of maintaining it. So that's a great source for trees, for looking at exhibitions even as kind of like, what trees have kind of hit that pinnacle too, because we're also looking to acquire trees that are at that stage. We're not looking to necessarily acquire raw material to develop trees because the work of just maintaining 150 sort of finished trees is a lot. And so we do have some trees that are in different stages of that process. There are sort of some that are sort of further away or have been in refinement for fewer years. We're still always sort of working. That said, there definitely is. There's always room for good trees. So, like, if it is a piece of raw material or less developed that comes from someone who's not represented in our collection or a species that's not represented in our collection, and any good museum is looking to add and expand their collection's diversity. And so, you know, in general, we're looking to donate, to have. To have trees offered through donation as that. As sort of our main vehicle for obtaining them. [00:20:06] Speaker B: Fantastic. [00:20:07] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:20:08] Speaker B: And so over time, I mean, the collection improves and you potentially weed out specific trees and bring in better quality trees. [00:20:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, part of good collections management is assessing your collection and evaluating what is not of the quality to continue to have the investment of time. And so whether it's artwork or bonsai, do you have too many junipers? Do you have too many trees from this region? Do you have not enough from this region? And so trying to identify what your collecting priorities are is great. And yeah, we will go through and look at trees. I would say once every five years or so is a good time frame to kind of make that assessment. One, because there's a limit on how many trees you can adequately take. And I think that's one of the challenges we all face in bonsai, is how do you. The more trees you have, the less time you have for each one. And as they get more refined, they require more time to maintain that refinement. When you have a couple branches that have been wired on Yamadori, it's like, yeah, we'll see you in like, three or four years. But when you have a, you know, a beach or elm that has hundreds and hundreds of very fine twiggy branches that all need to be trimmed only maybe like an eighth of an inch, and you times that by, you know, that many trees, it starts to compound. And so I think one of the things that Dave did really well as a curator was to maintain a considerably high standard of quality across the collection. Instead of having Trees that were really, really good and trees that were kind of like not shouldn't really be in a collection. Everything was maintained kind of at a high level. Right. And the way you do that is by having fewer trees. So trying to evaluate that as we've sort of adding a tree to evaluate those sorts of factors, there's always room for a really good tree. But good collections management requires you to de accession trees. And not every collection has that as an option. There's some collections that, that process is extremely difficult and, or impossible. So it's not like it's a universal. But for us, thankfully, deaccessioning is not a painful procedure, but it's also not a procedure that happens quickly or without thought every, like I said, five years or so. But you're sort of evaluating like what just isn't of that quality comparatively and passing that on to someone who's going to take care of, take better care of it because again, you're investing your time in the trees that are the most, the highest quality trees because they merit that. And it's sort of like the redheaded stepchild. You're not going to get as much time to make that tree better, but someone else might actually have that time because to them, to a practitioner, a museum tree is a. Is fairly good tree from a starting point because it has come from, you know, a long sort of history of care, at least here at the facility. [00:23:14] Speaker B: For sure. Yeah, I'm all about quality over quantity and I feel like too many North American bonsai enthusiasts fall into the trap of. [00:23:23] Speaker A: Yeah, it's the natural progression of the, of the, you know, enthusiast is you, you have that, that curve of, of quantity and then quality increases and yeah, then hopefully you kind of find that threshold to. Because everyone's, you know, limited on how much time and they have to dedicate to a quality tree. So. So, yeah, I mean, I guess you'd rather have people doing bonsai that of low quality than no quality. And you know, we love all levels of bonsai. But I think, you know, you and me, we aspire to, you know, operate in that echelon of like continually improving the quality of our trees and the trees of the general community, for sure. [00:24:04] Speaker B: So do you have a hard cap here? Is there like a. [00:24:06] Speaker A: That's a good question. No, I. So yeah, I would say generally 150, that's kind of the sweet spot. If we got to a hundred, that would probably be better. But then it's. And so maybe, you know, you kind of go down to. But Yeah, I would say 150 is the cap. If someone asked me how many trees we have, I typically say 150. We might be above, we might be below, but that's generally where we're trying to keep it. But then that's why every five years you kind of have to look around and be like, oh my gosh, I've got 180 now. What, what happened? Let me get rid of 30 trees because I don't need that many. Or I've got this project tree that I've been trying to really make something out of for the last decade. For me, I try to use the reference of has it been on public view in the last five years? If I have not displayed this tree, that tells me something like, what is the problem? Why am I not displaying it? Is it just quality issue or is it, you know, what is there something. And so if that's, and that's kind of a point for what we exist, we exist to display our trees. And so if they haven't, they haven't shown up for five years, there's probably a reason for that. And I probably then should think about moving that one along because someone else will probably enjoy working on that project more than we have the time to because we just, we just can't get to it, unfortunately. So for sure. Yeah. [00:25:30] Speaker B: So does the museum have a good process for culling the lower quality trees and like, does that, I mean, the money comes back to the museum for other purposes? [00:25:42] Speaker A: Yeah, we've only done it once. We've only had one tree sale because we got a large donation of trees as sort of to. With the focus of selling. And so good collections management means you aren't taking something in that you don't intend to keep. So you don't want to just take something and not plan to actually keep it forever. Like ideally. Right. You can't promise that. But it's not ideal to bring something in that you're going to just kind of flip at least, you know, best practices. But when someone donates trees for the purpose of selling, we're not just, we're not going to be sitting on them for years and years and years. So we did have that opportunity a number of years ago and that sort of opened the door to looking at the trees and selling them. We learned a lot from that experience. Shipping trees is extremely challenging. And so another thing to add to. [00:26:37] Speaker B: My list that I don't like. [00:26:39] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, so, yeah, we'll just leave that there. But so we learned a lot from that and so, yeah, we would look to have some sort of public sale is what we did in that one instance. And that's the vehicle that we would, I'm sure, pursue if we, I mean, it depends on the tree too. So backing that up to a museum, you have the responsibility of stewarding these trees for the, for the benefit of the public. Right. So there's a little bit different focus that a sort of non profit museum has in a business or a practitioner or whatever. And if it is a tree of certain note, let's say for example, the Domodo maple, if that ever went out, if that ever left this collection, that would be a tree that would need to first go into another public collection or does the tree merit continuation in the public space? Right. So selling it wouldn't be the first choice for something like that. It would be, is there another collection that would benefit from having this tree? And that's sort of my first consideration. You know, can we find another public collection that would want this and take care of it and value it and the public could still see it because once, because if you do sell it, it does go into someone's private collection and you're less likely the public's going to have access to that again. So still trying to maintain the public's consideration in that process is still the ethical thing, at least that we start with. [00:28:08] Speaker B: That's great. [00:28:09] Speaker A: Yeah, that's great for sure. [00:28:11] Speaker B: Yeah. I guess one subject that I would love to kind of pick your brain on and get your thoughts on is. And this, it's a, it's a subject that it's not really fun to talk about or doesn't put a smile on my face by any means. And it's kind of like bonsai estate planning, I guess the issue that I see within the United States is that often our collections don't become multigenerational. And what I, what I seem to see happen is someone that's super passionate about bonsai will have a high quality collection of trees. And if they pass away, which is not the funnest, most fun subject to talk about, their family tries to continue taking care of those trees because they have a sentimental value to the person that passed away, which is a very natural and great thing. However, I just feel like it's not something that I like. I would like my trees to live on past me. And part of my legacy is putting my time and resource and energy and my mark on my collection. And so I think it's really important that our trees live on past us. [00:29:29] Speaker A: Sure. [00:29:29] Speaker B: I think that they should. And so. But at the same time, I don't like to necessarily think about that all the time, and I haven't taken any steps towards doing anything like that. But do you see people bringing you, like, wills potentially? Is that something. [00:29:48] Speaker A: We do get contacted. So, yeah, I mean, we do get contacted from time to time with that situation. But usually how it plays out is the person is the tree has maybe lost any value that would make it justifiable to accession. Someone's passed away, they're obviously handling other things, they're keeping it for sentimental reasons. And then like a year or two later, they finally kind of get around to doing that. So, I mean, if you're asking for my thoughts on that, you know, I know that the. I'm pretty sure the Portland Bonsai, the Bonsai Society of Portland, has this kind of, like, program where they will have club members sort of, like, take over, like, if a club member passes away. So I guess it depends on how well you're connected to the community. Right. If you're in a club, that would be something that clubs would think to figure out within their membership of, like, hey, we have this program that if you pass away, we will take over the care of your trees until your next of kin can figure out what you want to do with. That's basically what BSOP has. So we've acquired a tree from that sort of. That program, that sort of fostering program. Yeah, because it was at least being cared for by a bonsai practitioner enough to know how to do that. Or if you have that type of collection where you've invested sizable, not just time, but money into. If you have an extremely valuable collection, I would think, like any other commodity, you would be thinking about, like, your stocks and your bonds and your bonsai as well, and start to have like, a. Some sort of at least, like, if you. If you reach that scale where you're like, this is going to be a problem for my family to figure out, you probably would want to think through, like, hey, I would like this tree to go to Pacific Bonsai Museum. I would like this tree to go to Oakland. I would like this tree to go to the national and at least put that in writing and. Or even just approach those collections now and be like, hey, would you be interested in this? Because, again, just because you would like that tree to go there doesn't mean it will. It has to be accessioned. And so, you know, you might just get some of those feelers out. Yeah, you know, it's kind of like what are your plans? So, yeah, it's not a fun thing to think about, but it's something that we always tout about bonsai is like, oh, this is going to live past me. And these outlive their caretakers. [00:32:19] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:32:20] Speaker A: But then as the caretaker, you're like, oh, yeah, what. What is going to happen? Which I think is one of the reasons why public collections are such a great thing to have, is they become those stewards of these trees that are extremely important, at least from a, you know, one just for the example, but two, if they have some sort of historical connection to somebody of the significant. Of the community, you know, that would be valuable. To maintain their sort of legacy is also as important. [00:32:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Fantastic. Well, that's a great program that BSAP has. I think that's super awesome. And I would like to see more clubs doing that. I think that's a fantastic resource. But then I think just for anyone out there, like, we want to get to the level, like Japan, where they have multigenerational trees. And I feel like to do that, we have to think about our trees now and what's going to happen after we pass, which is not. Not a topic that I love talking about, but I think it's important. And that's. [00:33:22] Speaker A: Yeah, I agree. I don't think people think about it, especially people like you and me who are in our midlife. You know, I think I'm thinking about it more. Yeah. As I'm getting older and my kids are getting older. But, yeah, when you're 20 or even 30, you're not too concerned about that. But unfortunately are things that happen that you can't foresee at 30 and 40, that you might actually, at 30 and 40, might benefit from having a kind of plan for where things are going to go. Even just if you have a teacher that you work with and are just like, hey, if something happens to me, I want you to take my trees. And I trust that you'll figure things out, you know, or. Or a friend or whoever your bonsai buddies are, kind of just have a pact with them, if nothing else, to just be like, hey, take care of my trees. [00:34:15] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:34:15] Speaker A: Wherever they go, like, figure it out. But I trust that you'll handle it. [00:34:18] Speaker B: So it's important. Very important. [00:34:20] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:34:21] Speaker B: Yeah. Well, not the funnest topic, but I appreciate you chatting with me about that. [00:34:28] Speaker A: Yeah, no problem. [00:34:29] Speaker B: You know, one thing I was curious about is, so you were very kind to me, introduce me to the director earlier. How do your two roles differ? And like, you know, what is what does the day to day look like for you? [00:34:43] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So Pat Bakos, our executive director, she is primarily responsible for, you know, keeping the water on and keeping our scissors sharp and making sure we have everything we need to take care of the trees. So she not only oversees all of the personnel here, so she's my boss at the museum. She also heads fundraising to make sure that we are continually raising the money we need to operate this collection, which, you know, it's not cheap. You know, if anyone does bonsai, we know how much of not just the time, the skill set that, that people bring to that, that is, that is valuable, but just the, the maintenance of it, you know. And then beyond that, we also have public outreach and things that we're doing aside just caring for the collection to add value to the community through the bonsai and try to get people here. So we have a staff of I think seven at this point, where we have four full time and three. Four part. Four part time. Yeah. So we actually have eight now, which is pretty big for a small organization like ours. And so comparatively my job is much more on site, on the grounds. Like I sort of spoke to the, managing the collection, overseeing staff, overseeing our collection, staff, planning exhibitions. So just like bonsai, seasonally it's different. What I'm doing in the winter versus what I'm doing in the summer is going to be based on that. But the bulk of my focus is on the collection. But this time of year, as we sort of head into the winter, this is where I have to do a lot of planning, writing in the, any exhibitions that we're going to be creating for next year. This is the season I have that, that quiet time to not to say that there's nothing to do with the trees that you know, there's pruning to do now. There's wiring that's happening, there's monitoring temperatures and kind of all of those sorts of winter care. But this is, this is the slow season for bonsai. And that's where we sort of do a lot of our annual planning. And personally just the writing component of my job for writing whatever exhibitions that we're going to be creating for the next year. I'm not quite to the level of other museums that are like planning exhibitions like four and five years out. I'm kind of like a year to year person, but this is the time of year that I'm doing that. And then, you know, repotting ramps up in the spring and all of our sort of seasonal bonsai activities change. Through the year combined with sort of our public facing events. We have a big festival in the springtime over Mother's Day weekend. And you know, it's, it's. What is the cool thing about this job is that with bonsai it's never the same thing. You know, it could be having to figure out something that's mechanical. You know, I had to install a new motor for our greenhouse exhaust fans because it was out. So doing that one day wiring a beach, another day meeting with somebody to talk about an exhibition next summer, you know, so it's just this kind of continual sort of different. There's like the consistency of the trees and like I know what I'm going to be doing on them every month. You know, I know what I'm going to be doing on in March, I know what I'm doing in October next year for the trees. But there's a lot of the day to day can be very different. Like you texted me a few days ago, I was like, hey, I'm coming into town, do you want to meet? No, but that's just it. That's part of the fun is you could be walking through the collection and someone is visiting from out of state and you're having a conversation that you didn't plan. And so it's. Yeah, it's just a, it's always kind of a. It's never the same thing twice. Yeah. Which is what I like about it. [00:38:42] Speaker B: Would you say is there a favorite aspect of the position for you? [00:38:47] Speaker A: Yeah, I like, I mean, I like working on the trees. I mean that's the thing and that's the thing that I feel it's. It's always one of those things where you don't realize how much you get to do the thing you like or how little you do the thing you like. You just know you always want to do more of it. So anything that kind of takes you away from doing the thing you like, you're kind of never feeling like there's enough. So it's always balancing the challenge of balancing the demand for sort of the infinite time sink of bonsai. So with 150plus refined trees, you could spend every day, eight hours a day working on the trees and you would never run out of things to do. And then you sort of combine that with having a public facing organization that's not just taking our trees, we're not just taking our bonsai, sort of putting them on a pedestal and be like, come look at them. You know, we're creating programs, exhibitions, you know, we're trying to do things around and with them that are beyond just the thing. So it kind of is making sure the bonsai stay front and center because it's very easy for all those other things to kind of supersede the work that needs to go in. Because at the end of the day, like, people are coming here to see the bonsai. And so I try to balance my time as much as I can and sort of protect when I can, you know, have to sort of make sure that I'm working on trees. Because there are times though, now where I have to kind of just hunker down and maybe write or do these sorts of things that you feel are, like, not. You would rather be wiring than writing. At least I would. But you have the time to do it, so you have to kind of like, get that in when you can. So, yeah. So, yeah, it's. It's a. It's a constant balancing act. But, yeah, working on the trees and I think beyond that is, you know, working with. One of the. One of the cool things about working here is coming from a museum or a public organization that has a reputation and has sort of this standing. You can approach other people, specifically, like artists who are not within the bonsai sphere and talk to them about doing things that are new and exciting and different. And so one of the things that I really enjoy doing is trying to bring outsiders into bonsai or maybe bring bonsai to outsiders and find new ways to, you know, continue to evolve the art of bonsai. Whether it's with, you know, working with people who are, you know, whatever, creating. Creating new and different. Different sort of works. So using the museum a little bit more to leverage that. That connections to work with and do collaborative sort of work. That's a little bit outside of the box. So I would like to do that. [00:41:44] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:41:44] Speaker A: All the time as well. [00:41:45] Speaker B: Awesome. Awesome. Well, I definitely want to give you mad props for the exhibits that you've put on and the creativity behind them. Like, I've been following along for several years now, so I remember the decked out one that you did. [00:41:59] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:42:00] Speaker B: And the lab project and. [00:42:02] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:42:03] Speaker B: One with this incredible natives. [00:42:06] Speaker A: Yeah, the natives exhibition. [00:42:07] Speaker B: So cool. [00:42:08] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:42:08] Speaker B: And I just. I love the creativity there, and I wish I could have seen all of them. [00:42:14] Speaker A: Sure. [00:42:15] Speaker B: In person. [00:42:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:42:17] Speaker B: I hope to catch one of the next ones that you put on, I guess. Can you give us any thoughts on, like, potential ideas that you've. You've kicked around for future exhibits and we won't hold you to. [00:42:30] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. No, I mean, that's kind of like the same thing with having, you know, having more plans or more ideas than time to execute. Yeah, I would say that's the thing that feels like it doesn't run dry is the ideas for exhibitions. Because that's how I came to this job. I came to it as wanting to work in, wanting to do exhibition design. Like that was my career path. And I happened to be hired as the assistant curator at the National Bonsai Museum in D.C. which is where I was doing my graduate work. And so having that kind of passion and enthusiasm for bonsai as an enthusiast, as a practitioner, coupled with my interest in doing exhibitions, I would say too, while exhibitions are hard, I think that's also something I really enjoy is trying to find ways to present bonsai to people in a way that they've never thought to do that before. That's really the exciting thing for me. So, yeah, so what we're working on next year is not. It's bonsai adjacent. So small talk. Our current exhibition is going to be up next year. That's our marquee exhibition where we're trying to sort of do a. Your most frequently asked questions as if the bonsai themselves are answering your question. And so the focus is on making it fun, making it accessible to kids, specifically, you know, in my kids demographic of 9, 10, 11, 12, and maybe even teenagers too, if they aren't too cool to like little trees. But trying to make bonsai accessible to kids is the current focus. Next year, though, we try to change out to having sort of a special exhibition. This coming year is going to be cool because there is another nonprofit that reached out to us and they represent a gentleman who unfortunately passed away in 2021. He was a. He was the head character artist for the series called Bob's Burgers. It's Burgers. It's an animated series. [00:44:40] Speaker B: Hilarious. [00:44:41] Speaker A: Yeah. So he unfortunately passed away and he was. He was their head character designer. His name is Dave Creek. He had. His hobby was building miniature tree houses inside of dead bonsai trees. So he was sort of taking these dead bonsai, preserving them, and then making these miniature scale, like architectural models in the bonsai. And so he had amassed a collection of them. Following his passing, his family basically created a nonprofit to share these creations with other people and to sort of continue his memory. And so we're bringing this traveling exhibition up to the museum next year and it's going to be kind of the first public opportunity for people to come who sort of liked the show and sort of knew about his passing, which was very sudden to see these trees in person. And it sort of ties into with our focus on kids and the sort of the tree house and youth and connection to nature and dreaming and sort of pursuing your passions and things like that. So that's going to be really cool. It's our first time we've done the first time I've brought in an exhibition from outside. But it's been really fun to work with them and to find out how to sort of move these objects up here. And then I'm also kicking around a few ideas for our special exhibition. I've always wanted to do a Karate Kid exhibition. I listened to the intro of your podcast. Seems like we're like minded in that way. You know, there's no shortage of like grand plans. But for this one it probably would be a smaller, you know, there's there while there is sort of like some problems with, you know, bonsai, how bonsai is presented, you know, maybe not super accurately, there's actually a lot of good, I think that the Karate Kid films represent and I know for me it really was the kind of watershed moment of seeing bonsai. And you know, we kind of were talking about bonsai history a little bit in my opinion, outside of the impact of World War II on popularizing bonsai, I would argue that the Karate Kid is probably the second most impactful sort of cultural phenomenon that's happened to sort of make bonsai as people as aware of it as it was, you know, and then the resurgence of the whole sort of Cobra Kai series now I think as terms of pop culture. I don't think you can point to another sort of like bigger influence on bonsai in the US than the Karate Kids. So maybe looking at that and just sort of breaking that down and kind of doing a very sort of small special exhibition. But yeah, I mean I'd love to do a Women in Bonsai. We have a number of trees from well known female bonsai artists who again are underrepresented in I think the narrative of bonsai. You know, we talk a lot about what the men have done, John Naka and Harry. And typically, you know, most of the professionals tend to be men both in Japan and in the US and abroad. But I do think there's a lot of really cool stories and women, a lot that women have done for bonsai that need to be recognized. So I think down the road I would love to do sort of a women's focused exhibition ideally to working with current women. I know there's been a few people who've been sort of writing about women in bonsai. So maybe have some guest curators or sort of someone having some women sort of more take the lead in curating it. Maybe some group project to do that. So. And then just continuing the. For me, I would love to just do avant garde exhibitions every year. That's kind of like, if I had a choice, I would just want to be doing avant garde style, which we did last year. It was our avant garde exhibition. And working with artists and creating cool and different compositions. Like, that's really. That's fun. So there's a few ideas floating around in there, you know, a, decked out to a natives two, you know, there's just no shortage of ways to present bonsai. And even just the historical looking at Japan. Haven't really talked too much about the Japanese story. We did a little bit in our World War Bonsai exhibition. But there's an infinite number of exhibitions that you could come up with, which is the cool part about it. [00:49:21] Speaker B: That's fantastic. Love to hear it. Love the creativity. And you've done a fantastic job with all the exhibits. So excited to see what. Which ones you do. [00:49:33] Speaker A: Yes. Well, we'll always sort of keep pushing at least the way that we present bonsai to the public and trying to find. Trying to find new avenues for people to approach the art form. Because our sort of motto here is we don't want to create practitioners, we want to create appreciators. And so our goal is not to have everyone that walks through the Bonsai Museum to go home and want to start bonsai. It's great if they do. We want everyone to go home and value and see the value of bonsai, whether they do it or not. But if they can now see the value of what we do, that's kind of the goal. At the end of the day, an art museum isn't trying to make everyone that goes through it a painter or a sculptor. It's great if they do. But you're going there because you see the value of experiencing art, experiencing the creativity of other human beings. And what a museum provides you is that opportunity, that experience. It's not necessarily trying to get you to do the thing that, you know they're showing. Right. So, yeah, that's kind of what's behind every exhibition is to provide people with that, just a new perspective. [00:50:48] Speaker B: It all starts with appreciation. With bullseye. [00:50:51] Speaker A: Absolutely. [00:50:51] Speaker B: Got to start there. Would you say one of the main goals is to get as many people appreciating bonsai as possible. [00:51:00] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would love to be, you know, I would love our little museum to be one of the, you know, most known, well known museums in the world. I mean, you know, that's, that's the ultimate goal is to have worldwide recognition as a, as, as a museum, not just a bonsai museum. But you know, that's, that's the big dream. But I think the more, the more you get people to get in front of a bonsai, it's really hard for them to not have some reaction. Usually positive. Right. Most people have positive reactions when they see the bonsai and it's just a matter of getting people to over the hurdles, which maybe the Karate Kid fed into a little bit of just like, what is a bonsai? What are we trying to do? It's not torture, it's not some stunt. All the kind of questions which is what our current exhibition is really trying to tackle. Not just from a general like baseline, but almost from a horticultural botanical standpoint of like what is the horticultural processes we're manipulating through hormonal control by pruning and now the oxygen suppressed. So you have lateral branching. You know, like there's just going a deep dive just on botany. Right. There's that whole other element that kids might not fully understand or even an adult, like what's photosynthesis? Right. Like do you remember what that was or does your average person remember? Yeah, it's, you know, plants make food from the sun, but kind of presenting that information in a way, using the trees as that sort of vehicle to do it. So ultimately they might come away with a, not just a greater sense of bonsai, but a greater appreciation for nature as a whole. So our mission as an organization is to inspire people to sort of take a closer look, you know, or I should say they're sort of inspiring a greater appreciation of nature by taking a closer look at bonsai. So we sort of are seeing bonsai as the sort of vehicles that we are hopefully generating a bigger appreciation for nature as an entire entity. And so part of the way that you do that is to understand how trees work and how dependent we are on them. And just if you can maybe get people to do that hopefully, then that might shift our general consciousness and a general valuation of the environment and how sort of fragile our world is. [00:53:23] Speaker B: Definitely, definitely. Well, changing gears here a little bit, I was actually pulled up. So you used to have a blog called Capital Bonsai, right? Okay, I looked it up. [00:53:37] Speaker A: Yeah, Capital Bonsai. Yeah, that was my, that was My DC blog when I was single or didn't have kids and had the. Had the drive to, like, blog. Yeah. [00:53:47] Speaker B: Awesome. And so you spent some time at Daijuan, right? [00:53:50] Speaker A: I did, yeah. [00:53:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Do you remember much about that and what year was that around? [00:53:55] Speaker A: Yeah, good question. It was in the. So I went to Japan in, I think the winter of 2013, maybe 14. I think it was shortly before I left here. I think I. Yeah, I think I went like winter of 2014, and then that summer I came here. Yeah. So I wanted to go to Japan because I had been in D.C. for almost a decade at that point. And when you work in Bonsai professionally, one of the most frequent questions I got asked was like, oh, have you been to Japan? [00:54:31] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:54:31] Speaker A: And, you know, I kept having to say no. And it was more to. I mean, obviously one to go there and experience it, but it almost felt like a sort of a box to check. So I could just say yes to that. [00:54:43] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:54:44] Speaker A: It didn't matter if I had been or not for how long. It was just like an expectation to be like, oh, you're a. You're a, you know, Michelin star chef. You've been to France, right? It's like, no, I haven't. So, yeah, I went to Daijuan through a connection with Jack Sustek, who was the curator at the National Museum at the time, my boss there. He had a long standing relationship with Mr. Suzuki and had gone to study it at Daijun. And, you know, Daijun being such a significant historical nursery, which is also right up my alley, and then also having some ties to a. Danny Coffey, who was a volunteer at the Bonsai Museum at that time as well, had went to Hien, which they're, you know, related nurseries. Familiar, familiarly. And so that was the opportunity to go there because I had never been to Coco Fu 10. So I wanted to go for Cocofu. I wanted to go and sort of have the Deshi experience. I wasn't going to go and spend, you know, the years and years. And I heard enough about it. I had read enough about it to sort of intellectually understand it. But I still pursued a very sort of unique path professionally. I didn't go apprentice in Japan. I went from my graduate into the National Collection and working in D.C. that was my apprenticeship because I was working on trees of the caliber that you would have in Japan. And you have to sort of just. You have to go up to their level. The trees level. Right. The trees force you to go to their level to work on Them at least that's how I sort of saw it. So going from a hobby, hobbyist enthusiast, then to assistant curator at the National Museum. I was doing it 40 hours a week, that sort of thing. And so that was sort of. I view that as my apprenticeship of eight years. I just kind of wanted though, to have a taste of it, to just to see what it was like. And so I went for a couple weeks and to help with kokufu tin, help with prep, help with transporting trees, set up to see the show, to kind of have a behind the scenes, pull back the curtain on what the kokufu is like from the perspective of a nursery, that daijuin. And so I got really sick pretty much right away. I think I had like strep throat for not, you know, high grade fever. But I was still in the workshop, like until midnight, you know, plucking needles. And I really, I was only there for a few weeks. So I was sort of viewed it as I was going to force myself to. Yeah, I wasn't going to lay in bed with and feel bad, you know, I felt like crap. But I'm, I'm in. This is like, I'm in Japan now. Like, I'm here. I'm going to suck it up and make every moment of it count. And so it was really, really wonderful. They took me in, I got to sort of have the deshi vibe of I slept in the house, they hosted me, they fed me all my meals, they took me, they paid for my medical bills because I eventually had to go to like, finally they kind of were like, we don't think you're too well there. Are you okay? I'm like, okay, I'm okay. And then I finally was like, I think I need to go see a doctor. And they're like, so they took me to a doctor, they paid for my doctor bills. They just sort of had that experience. They told me when to shower. That was sort of the one real unique one of like, everyone bathes. You know, like the kids bathe everyone. Then it's like, now you get to. Now it's your turn. And it wasn't like, I'm too tired to take a shower. It was like, no, like, you have to, like, it is your turn to go shower. Like, you go do that. [00:58:34] Speaker B: Yeah. [00:58:35] Speaker A: You don't have a choice to like, I'll, I'll shower in the morning type of vibe. It's like, no, yeah, like this is your chance. And then just seeing the whole koku fu. And that's sort of for Me, the biggest takeaway as we were talking about transporting trees, that was the most valuable thing I learned in my time of the two weeks I was at Daijun was how to trans, how to pack trees, how to load them, how to maximize space. Because they cram them in their trucks and in their vans. Like there's not a wasted square inch of space. And like, yeah, they're loading like $60,000 trees, you know, like they're high value objects and they don't want them careening around when they're driving. And you know, so just seeing that and doing that so much. And this was. Now they do the change out every year. I think this was, this was Kokufu 88, I believe. And so they. There was a change out. And so we ended up driving to Tokyo there initially to set up back to the nursery at the midway point, back up, change out trees, bring more trees back, and then finally at the close to pick everything back up again. And so driving from, you know, outside of Nagoya. Yeah, it's like three and a half, four hours, I believe, if memory serves me. I think I calculated, I think I. I think I covered something like a couple thousand miles, you know, just in the back and forth over the course of two weeks. It was like maybe 1500. I might be exaggerating, but anyway, just that whole process of seeing how bonsai are handled, how bonsai are moved. All of that I took back with me and sort of that then I was excited to try all of that out. So like, yeah, taking trees to Rochester from D.C. and I was like, yeah, I'll drive it, no problem. Now I get to sort of pass that information along. But yeah. Do you have any experience with Daiju in or what's your connection there? [01:00:27] Speaker B: Well, so, yeah, I think I was in Japan like very close in time period as you. [01:00:34] Speaker A: Oh, interesting. [01:00:35] Speaker B: 2015 for me. [01:00:36] Speaker A: Okay. [01:00:37] Speaker B: And I went to Aichi and. [01:00:38] Speaker A: Okay. [01:00:38] Speaker B: And did a very similar thing just like a few weeks. And it was Juan, John Milton and Danny Coffey were there. [01:00:47] Speaker A: Yeah, they were the ones that were all there. Right. [01:00:49] Speaker B: And so I mostly like Juan helped me out a whole lot. He was like my teacher the whole time there. [01:00:56] Speaker A: He was like the head, the head supply of the group, I believe at the time. Yes. [01:01:02] Speaker B: But we did get to go check out Daijuan, which was a very impressive nursery and all the history there with inventing de candling. [01:01:11] Speaker A: Right. [01:01:11] Speaker B: I mean the multi generational thing, it was just so such a cool experience. [01:01:15] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Which is just fascinating to, to also understand how all of these nurseries are interrelated. And the trees, like, you're talking about the intergenerationalness. You know, how the trees have moved from nurseries to nurseries over that really long time period. And it's like, oh, this is started by this person and now it's here. Or we started this one and now it's there. Yeah, you know, it was cool to see, like, everything from a teen bone photo shoot one day. I mean, you talk about kind of the diversity to packing the trees to just going to get, you know, whatever, like rice or, you know, like, I mean, you know, it was just this kind of perpetual. No day was ever the same. So it was really kind of cool. And also just to not have to, like, think about anything but bonsai was just like, we're gonna go. Like, just here we're going. You know, I can't remember the name of that temple up the. Up the. Like the next town over there was a temple that had a really prominent bonsai collection that the daijuan would sort of maintain or sort of trade out trees in. There was like a restaurant there. And was it a. [01:02:21] Speaker B: Did a monk own it? [01:02:22] Speaker A: Yeah, okay. [01:02:23] Speaker B: I know. I'm not sure what it's called. [01:02:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I can't remember it right now. I used to know all of that stuff. I used to know all of the names, all of the nurseries. So, yeah, I think that's one thing that's kind of becoming more sort of working in a museum, at least working at PBM and trying to be so public focused does. I think it does maybe take away from the connectedness to the bonsai community a little bit, like, as a. As a specific sort of component. Because back in that day, back when I was, you know, in my late 20s or early 30s and in D.C. and you have that kind of arc of your own enthusiasm where you really are interested. And it's just every blog you're gonna just read and always staying up on, like, who's apprenticing here and who's. Like, there was a point in time where I knew in Japan, like, every, like the name of every Western apprentice at whatever nursery, and I could name all the nurseries. And now, like, I have very little idea of, like, who is in Japan. And now they're. And people come back like, oh, this is so. And so it's like, oh, so it's just interesting to kind of see the impact of having. Working in. Working in an organization like this, where you are trying to take bonsai and present it to other People or to take it out into the world takes you out of the community a little bit, which is, I think, why it's important for us to continue to be participating in things like the Expo or Rochester or. And it's, you know, it's. It's just something. Something I've noticed as kind of time has gone by that I don't quite have as strong of a grasp of the global bonsai scene as I used to. Yeah. And so I think I'm gonna. I'm trying to regain that a little bit. And so my hope is, I think for the 100th anniversary Kokufu is coming up in 2026. So my goal is to go to that, because if you're going to talk about the historical significance of an exhibition, the 100th Kokufu should be pretty cool. I did get to go to the 2017 Expo World Bonsai Friendship Federation in Japan, which was once in a lifetime type of thing as well. But I would love to. My hope is to spend some time at the Omiya Bonsai Museum in some sort of research capacity doing some, some co projects with them or something like that. So we'll see if that, that plays out. But yeah, trying to just get back a little bit more into the larger awareness of kind of what's happening. Because so much has changed in the last 15, 20 years globally. I feel like there's more, more people doing bonsai than ever. There's more podcasts, there's more, you know, professionals than there's ever been, I think maybe in the history of the, of the U.S. i mean, it feels like, at least it feels like it's to me and that maybe just because I might be not as connected to all of it as I used to, maybe there's just as many. I don't know. What's your, what are your thoughts on that? What's your perspective on kind of the growth or the next sort of class? Because for me, I sort of have a connection to the people like Boone and Kathy Shaner and those sorts of like Michael Hagedorn who were kind of ahead, like the class ahead. Yeah. And then I sort of have my connections with like Ryan and Peter Warren and these sort of other people who were sort of like in Japan while I was in D.C. and I feel are kind of similar in age. And now there's like, know. And I would say like, you know, the other sort of class behind. That's so, you know, I'm just curious, like, what is that from. From your perspective? Like, what does it look like now for the kind of the next class of professionals coming in. Like, are there as many as you think there, like, as there has been, or is there. There's more. Like, what is the state of that, in your opinion? [01:06:31] Speaker B: It's interesting. So I. I would say I do follow quite a few bonsai apprentices over in Japan, and there's a few of them that I kind of have some connection with. Like, I used to work with Boone quite a bit and Kaya Mooney, who's over at Fujikawa Koken. [01:06:48] Speaker A: Right. [01:06:49] Speaker B: Actually, he. He finished up earlier this year. [01:06:51] Speaker A: I've heard. I've heard of his. I've heard of him and I've heard. Yeah, so I hear it after the fact. Right. [01:06:56] Speaker B: For sure. [01:06:57] Speaker A: This person's coming back and I'm like, I. Oh, who are they? So, yes, you. You are aware of them while they're in country, while they're doing their apprenticeship. Yes. [01:07:05] Speaker B: And so we message back and forth. I talk to him every once in a while. He's a really good guy. I know he's very talented. Also, there's a guy named Seth who's over at ign who finished up. I think both of them are coming back. They both either had a kid or Seth just announced that him and his wife are with child. So I see that. But then, like, Bjorn moved to Japan, so we lost him. [01:07:35] Speaker A: Right. [01:07:35] Speaker B: That was a big. A big one. Big loss for us, I think, in the bonsai community of North America. But overall, yeah, I think there's. I don't know, there seems to be a steady state of Americans going or Westerners going to Japan and then returning. I don't know if it's necessarily more, but there's definitely new people that are keep coming back. Adam Toth is another one. He apprenticed with Taiga Urushibata at Taishoen and he came back recently. He's focusing on shohin, which I think it's a smart move for them to focus on something specifically. I think we need more of that. [01:08:22] Speaker A: Within the U.S. yeah, that's really interesting. I mean, I think. I think the fact that you're able to. And I would say, like with Andrew focusing more on deciduous. Yeah, that's an. At least. I don't want to say it's a new thing, but it feels newer because the capacity to have a specialist. Right. Almost moves more towards a Japanese model of the sort of the bonsai industry where there, you know, you have just the grafters, you have just the ume like you have, or the shohina you know, like there, there's for there to be specialists means that the market or the demand has grown to the point where you actually can specialize in that. You don't have to be a generalist. Right. You don't have to be able to cover everything, which I think is great. Like it's. I think it sort of shows the. The health of the bonsai community if you can actually specialize in like shohin or tropicals or whatever. Right. Yeah. [01:09:28] Speaker B: I really think those specialists in North America are really going to move the needle just in terms of overall quality because to me it's a simple equation of, hey, you're spending a whole. If you, if you specialize in shohin, you're putting all your hours into shohin, and therefore I would think that you would become better, faster and make a bigger dent on the bullseye community specializing in shohin. So I like the idea. [01:09:55] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:09:56] Speaker B: I think it's. Seems to be working for those who have specialized, even though it's. It's a newer thing in the US for sure. [01:10:04] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I think it speaks to more having more diversity too, is going out, like you were saying, kind of increase the quality. Also, I think having people distributed across the country. You know, there's. There is such a high concentration of bonsai professionals along the west coast, but also the Southeast is also pretty, pretty stacked as well, at least in terms of what I'm saying is people who are in those sort of newer, younger professionals, you know, under 40 who have gone to Japan and are now, you know, continuing to invest in that. So yeah, I think is the value of dispersing, making sure like the whole country is kind of represented too, just as much as the species and maybe unique specialists are. Right. So the more deciduous people. You have a deciduous person in the New England area versus just sort of. We associate that with Andrew on the west coast per se. And not to say those other people aren't doing deciduous maybe, but from a professional standpoint. Right. [01:11:09] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:11:09] Speaker A: Because there's a lot of really good deciduous, you know, artists and practitioners out here. But to be able to try to make a living doing that, even like if bonsai is. Isn't specialist enough. Right. I mean, that's kind of the point. Right. If you can make a living doing bonsai and then a sort of niche within bonsai, like that's pretty, pretty interesting to see that as even a possibility now. [01:11:34] Speaker B: Absolutely. Yeah. Cool. Just want to check on time. It's 6:40. [01:11:40] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:11:41] Speaker B: We doing okay? You want to. [01:11:43] Speaker A: Yeah. So I have until about 8:15 is when I got to go pick up my kiddo. So we don't have to do a drawn out meal or whatever. We can go grab a bite somewhere that's you know, pretty awesome. Quick and easy. So yeah, I would say yeah, if we want to wrap it up at 6, kind of start wrapping it up. I gotta go. I still have to close up a few things here at the facilities that might take me a hot minute. So. So yeah, I'd say if we could probably. If we can get out of here in like 7, 10 or so I could. Yeah, we could probably still get a bite. [01:12:17] Speaker B: That sounds great. [01:12:18] Speaker A: Cool. [01:12:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I guess. And so there's no agendas or topics with this podcast. Like I'm. My goal is to ask questions to try and like get interesting answers or just, just get what's on your mind. I guess I'm curious. Like anything come to top of the mind in terms of like what you have been passionate about lately with bonsai. Super broad question. [01:12:50] Speaker A: Yeah, that's a good question. [01:12:53] Speaker B: Or like where's. Where do you daydream? [01:12:57] Speaker A: Yeah, I mean that's, that's the daydreaming stuff comes from trying to think about new ideas or new concepts for how to present bonsai. How like. Yeah, so I try to not. I don't, I don't like people who call themselves a master. Like self. Self imposed titles bother me. So I. But if I were to classify myself, if we were to give myself a title, I do like to be. I don't know if a disruptor is right or a rebel or whatever. I'm sort of not doing well with the word choice which is why I don't like to apply the labels. But I do like to kind constantly think of new ways of approaching something familiar and finding new ways to present it. And so the avant garde exhibitions is kind of the thing that I'm always thinking about of how to take what I'm interested in, which is typically technology. I'm really interested in AI, I'm really interested in sort of 3D printing. I'm interested in. Yeah, just, just technology. How do you integrate technology into bonsai? I'm. That's just. That's always on my mind. Not just purely from a horticultural standpoint but from an aesthetic standpoint. How do you take bonsai and make it relevant to contemporary culture and specifically culture that's not the bonsai culture. Which is one of the reasons why I feel like more sometimes of disconnected from the bonsai community is because the focus isn't always on the bonsai community. Whereas a professional. That is your. That's your clientele, that's your source. Those are the people that are going to be your patrons. I'm trying to elicit interest from people who have no interest in bonsai. And how do you get people who have no interest in bonsai interested? Because they're aware of it, but whatever they know about it or think they know, they're not interested in it. And so finding ways of getting bonsai into the art world is also. Is really something that continually drives me, you know, the. There's a whole separate podcast about the discussion of bonsai as art or craft. But, you know, how do you get bonsai to be more considered or thought of or referenced as fine art? Because I don't think it's as much as we say it is art. I don't think the general public thinks of it in that way. It's viewed largely as, you know, a gardening curio. You can take a bonsai and cast it in bronze, and then it's art. Or, you know, you can take that object of what bonsai symbolizes and do something with it. That's art. But. Yeah, how do you. How do you take the living entity of a tree and still take, you know, take it out of the context of bonsai traditionally and make it something that people are going to look at differently? And that's sort of that discussion of just, you know, like the word bonsai, which I don't think there's a better one out there. And I'm not suggesting that we try to figure one out, but at the same time, you know, what is that? Right. Constantly just the future is extremely interesting and sort of. How do you. You know, I would say the person that I'm sort of the most intrigued that the person that I pay attention a lot to is the tradesman bonsai, Teppan Kojimi. Yeah, I would say what he's doing in Japan, I would say, is disruptive in a way that is unique. I would say, like Ryan coming back and sort of the Mirai Live that disrupted the teach, the way bonsai is taught. Right. Live streaming it. That was before COVID You know, like now everyone is starting to realize that the value, like, that's now the standard. Right. So I like to be on the cutting edge, or I like to be pushing the edge. I like to sort of see how far you can push the boundaries. That's what's interesting to me is kind of if it's been done before, I'M not interested in it. So someone like, I believe that's his name, Koijimi, the tradesman bonsai gentleman who's basically associating bonsai with luxury brands and the context that he's putting them in. And that's the other thing is creating new context, moving, taking bonsai and putting it somewhere and recontextualizing it, you know, whether it is next to Alexis or in some sort of fashion boutique or wherever. But the more that is being done, the more interest I find in that. And that's something that is really, really interesting is how do you, how do you disrupt the bonsai kind of standard? [01:18:09] Speaker B: Well, I love that you're interested in that. And I think that like. Well, I was a big fan of the lab project and seeing that kind of. You had a few different iterations of that. And then also seeing it at the 2022 Pacific Bonsai Expo. [01:18:29] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:18:29] Speaker B: With the glass piece under it and the paper behind the display was just so cool and very innovative and just something different. And it's really fun and interesting to see those types of things. So. [01:18:42] Speaker A: Yeah, I really appreciate that. Yeah. Well, I thank you. Yeah, I mean, I think too the stuff that Eric's trying to do as well with the PBE and his installations. So yeah, I would say moving bonsai display into more of installation art, like that's the goal for me is when I'm. If I could do anything, it would be doing installation bonsai installations, but like art installations. Yeah. So one of the things we're going to be doing and if you. Next week is our winter solstice where I've started to try to do some different lighting things with LEDs and to try to just create these sort of one off displays for this kind of community event that's you know, light, lights, it's. It's not like just, you know, putting ornaments or something on. On a bonsai, but the idea of just, you know, how do you. How are you incorporating technology? So LED technology is super advanced now. They're really small. There's all these really just cool technologies that are emerging. How do you. How can those be incorporated into the art, the art of bonsai in an artistic way? Not just in a. In a sort of helps us care for them better way. Yeah. So that's kind of what. What I daydream about is how I can create something that's super different. [01:20:02] Speaker B: Fantastic. [01:20:03] Speaker A: I love it. [01:20:03] Speaker B: And I want to encourage you to keep. Keep at it. [01:20:06] Speaker A: Cool. [01:20:07] Speaker B: I guess. One last thing kind of on that same vein, I Got to see your forest deconstructed. I don't know what you actually call that, but would you tell me a little bit about that more? Because I thought that was a cool idea. [01:20:19] Speaker A: Yeah. So that was what we were hoping to exhibit in the Expo. So the long story short is this was one of the projects. I've got several of these projects that I've been thinking about for 10 years at this point, coming to the, to the museum. And there are trees that I think, you know, have the opportunity. You wouldn't do this with any tree. There are certain trees that are of a provenance or a lack thereof that open the opportunity to do something very different. And so this was a forest that I, when I came here, was sort of in weak health. I took it apart as with a few sections, right, that was several groupings of trees. And as a forest in bonsai, right, where we have the front, we sort of present our trees from sort of a singular viewpoint. I think that's a sidebar. But I do think the idea of continually trying to present bonsai from multiple angles as a sort of standalone sculpture and maybe moving away from the Kokofu model of like the sheet, you know, the backdrop sheet, and just having trees as standalone objects, that's a sidebar. But that, that feeds into the installation idea is the forest was deconstructed separately for the health, regained health. And the idea behind it was, and this sort of ties into the technology and kind of the ability to reconfigure and change bonsai quicker than maybe we can when we have a forest composition, right, it's planted, it stays there, the arrangement of those trees doesn't change. And so the idea was if we had a forest made of the same trees, or these trees were at a forest at one time, but in containers that could actually interlock or to be configured in a way in different configurations other than just maybe the true sort of front, almost like Legos where they're, they're building blocks. And so depending on the space you have, depending on the primarily there, they can be adapted to be displayed across a 20 foot span, a four foot span, they could be vertical. And so providing like this sort of ability to play with the composition in a way that was just different, I guess. And so having this artist who I came across his work, his name is David Umemono, he's a Japanese Canadian artist who has an architectural background. You can find him on Instagram. He produces these concrete sculptures that are sort of miniature. They have a very architectural feel to them. There's a brutalist component, which I like brutalist architecture. And there's kind of this futuristic science fiction vibe, which I also. I love Star Wars, Dune, and, you know, all that sort of, again, anything science fiction is again, right up my alley. And so all that sort of meshed together and he looked like he would be a great person to collaborate with. He had done a little bit of. I'd seen a few kind of bonsai pots he kind of made, but it was. He mostly does these large architectural forms. And long story short, as we worked together, to sort of execute this idea, building off of what he had kind of already done, which was to sort of have these smaller planters kind of very similar in idea, where. Imagine like a Kusumono, where you had these sort of interlocking, very geometric shaped containers that you could create a larger kind of, you know, unit of plants, but they're all individual, you know, little plant plants in them, but you could configure that however you wanted. So, like, modularity is. I guess if there's one thing I would say I'm really interested in, how do you create modularity in bonsai displays that allow you to create multiple iterations of a display using the same things, right? Because it would. Because our bonsai, it's like, here's the front, here's my pot, here's the stand. And while there is the. That is the sort of. The traditional goal, right. Of bonsai design is to achieve that kind of like, singular display with all the components very thoughtfully and tastefully chosen, and the craftsmanship and all that is great. You know, having the ability to, like, have a viewer walk up and rearrange your display and sort of use those almost like Legos and take those building blocks and make something different using the same components. That's really just interesting to me as an idea. So could you create a display where you actually have some sort of audience participation or engagement where the person viewing could actually play and make their own display with your. The pieces of your display. Right. [01:25:04] Speaker B: Have a contest with that tree. [01:25:07] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. [01:25:07] Speaker B: The best. [01:25:08] Speaker A: Yeah, well, and there's an interaction. Right? And so in bonsai displays, too, it's very standoffish, right? You look, you don't touch, you get. You know, like, there is that, you know, like, it's. It all derives from the tokonoma, which is the sort of. Originally was that sacred space that existed. It's kind of the. You're crossing into that sort of. You're sort of defiling, right? The. The sacred display. I Think going the other way of having people be able to engage and change and modify and have a different experience with display, which, you know, a lot of it can be coming from the group displays of people who sort of, you know, workshop, which I know the BIB was doing long ago. And that's where the PBE sort of morphed out of, where you kind of have these groups discussions about what's the best stand, what's the best tree, what's the best accent, and sort of are making this sort of epitome of the display using multiple components from different people. That's sort of an extension of that, but actually physically changing the orientation of the tree or the container by creating a system, like a modular system that you could actually reconfigure those things and have an infinite, hypothetically infinite number of presentations of that tree. That sounds really interesting to try to develop. And so I just talked to David today about another project, another conceptual project where we're going to be taking a tree and making a. Having. Making a metal container for it. And then what I'm interested in doing is I'm really interested from a hobby standpoint in 3D printing. [01:26:49] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:26:50] Speaker A: And so trying to 3D print some type of tile system that you could affix to this metal container with neodymium magnets, and that actually would then allow you to 3D print a variety of tiles in different colors, shapes, and designs. So you could actually change the exterior of your container every day if you wanted to. Right. The limitations of this is my container. This is what it's going to look like until I repot it again. But just having this ability to change the feel, kind of like changing your clothes for an event. Right. It would be just to have some fun to explore, you know, how does changing that texture or color or whatever. Very similar to the aesthetic, though, of what David's stuff is. You know, where it is very kind of geometric or. That's so cool. Para. Parametric or whatever. [01:27:45] Speaker B: Yeah. I'm just thinking from an educational perspective, even. Let's say we take a fruiting and flowering tree and we could just instantly change the color of the pot. [01:27:54] Speaker A: Right. [01:27:54] Speaker B: See within different seasons what looks best. [01:27:58] Speaker A: Right. [01:27:58] Speaker B: That would be a really cool educational tool. [01:28:00] Speaker A: Absolutely. Or just, you know, even just for the. Yeah. Just for the. The enjoyment of having that change. Right now I'm like, oh, what if you could do that with some sort of like, LED wrap around a container where you could just, you know, control the texture or the color or the hue or, you know, so for me, the aesthetic of the combination of technology into the bonsai is very appealing. I know for some people, that's. That's not interesting at all. Like, that's the whole reason we engage with bonsai, is to get away from technology. I'm the exact opposite. I want to figure out how to, like, infuse technology, like, as much as I can into the trees. So that's my own personal, though rad interest. [01:28:41] Speaker B: That's rad. I like it. [01:28:42] Speaker A: Cool. [01:28:43] Speaker B: Cool, man. [01:28:44] Speaker A: Well, yeah, I appreciate you coming out, Jeremiah, and hopefully there's something worth listening to in the ramblings that we've been having for a while. But, yeah, I appreciate what you're doing. I appreciate the podcast. I love podcasts, and I think they're such a great vehicle for people to access this information. And if you're super hungry about bonsai, the more podcasts, the better. I agree. And I think if people are interested in supporting the bonsai museum, you can follow us on our Instagram page at Pacific Bonsai Museum. And yeah, just give us a shout out. And if you're in town, please stop by and say hi. And we're very grateful for everyone who loves us and supports us, and even if you don't, that's great. We love you as well. And we're going to continue to kind of challenge. Challenge people to think about bonsai differently. [01:29:39] Speaker B: Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for your time. I really, really appreciate it. I think we're very lucky and fortunate to have you in the North American bonsai community, doing a fantastic job here and getting so many people to appreciate. Start appreciating bonsai. I think that's a very, very important role that we need more of, and you do a fantastic job with it. So awesome, man. Really appreciate it. Thank you. [01:30:04] Speaker A: All right, thanks, Jeremiah.