Bonsia Art of Ancient Buddhist Monk's Birthed Today's Arborsculpture

COLUMBIA DAILY TRIBUNE
By Jan Wiese-Fales

MISSOURI -- Even though trees easily can be defined as natural works of art, mankind historically has enjoyed tinkering with nature’s originals to shape and manipulate them into living sculptures. Bonsai is the art of dwarfing trees, whereby every branch and twig of a single potted tree is bent, wired or snipped to produce a work of aesthetically appealing shape and texture. These miniature landscapes originated in ancient China and were spread eastward to Japan by Buddhist monks. The Japanese refined the art form, in which the container plays an equal role in the overall artistic impression of the piece. Bonsai literally means “tray planting.”  And then there is arborsculpture, a term coined in 1995 by author and tree sculpturist Richard Reames to describe a technique of pruning, grafting and bending trees into living sculptures, furniture and structures. This sort of tree art utilizes inosculation, a phenomenon in which branches or trunks of trees can grow together in a sort of natural graft. There are three widely recognized innovators of arborsculpture: John Krubsack, Arthur Wiechula and Axel Erlandson. [link]