I got back awhile ago from a workshop with Roy Nagatoshi with my club,
Yama Ki Bonsai Society, which meets in Stamford CT. I'm in NY and drive
about 1.5 hours to get there. Anyway, we did something different for a
format that worked quite well. Instead of having him work on a single
demo tree, we encouraged members to bring a tree for critique. We just
had him spend some time with each one, talking about good and not so
good features, what he would do with it if it were his tree, etc. It
was not a well-attended meeting so there was plenty of time for each
tree. He critiqued about six trees. The BYO workshop in the afternoon
was for either the trees brought in for a critique, or others. Since we
only had six or seven for the workshop there was plenty of time for
each tree. The rest of us had finished our trees for the day and we
spent almost an hour talking with him as he worked on a really nice
shimpaku juniper that belonged to a member. It was a very worthwhile
workshop and I enjoyed working with Roy. He's a very low key teacher,
very good at drawing out of the student what he/she sees in the tree,
and helping the student to get the tree on track towards that goal.

Craig Cowing
NY
Zone 5b/6a Sunset 37

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