Mohawk Valley Bonsai Club Opens Doors for Japanese Aesthetics and Suiseki Program

The Mohawk Valley Bonsai Club is bringing suiseki, the art of viewing stones, to Utica tomorrow with a program that pairs an introduction to the practice with a traditional bonsai display and a broader look at Japanese aesthetics. The event runs Saturday, March 14, from 1 to 3:30 p.m. at NY Energy Zone, located next to the Utica Zoo at 35 Utica Zoo Way. The Mohawk Hudson Bonsai Society posted an open invitation on March 9 encouraging anyone interested to attend.

This is not the club's usual warm-weather setup. MVBC typically holds its second-Saturday meetings at D'Alessandro's Nursery and Garden Center on 1346 Higby Rd. in Frankfort when temperatures stay above freezing, but the March meeting has shifted to NY Energy Zone, and the club flagged the location change prominently on their site.

For anyone unfamiliar with suiseki, the concept has deep roots in Japanese and Chinese aesthetic tradition: a naturally shaped stone is selected and displayed for the landscapes, figures, or abstract forms it suggests to the viewer. Pairing that with a traditional bonsai display makes for a program that covers the full visual philosophy underlying the art, not just the horticultural mechanics of keeping a tree in a pot.

MVBC has been building toward exactly this kind of programming since the group first gathered in a park in July 2005. Established to serve the Utica and Rome region, the club has grown over two decades to include members ranging from first-year beginners to practitioners with 20-plus years of experience. Their stated mission frames it plainly: "Providing opportunities to have fun while developing skills, the Mohawk Valley Bonsai Club is a forum for learning, inspiring, building knowledge, and connecting with the greater bonsai community."

Past programs have covered the practical side of the hobby in depth. Art Doremus delivered a well-received session on identifying and managing insect and fungal problems, and the club has hosted shohin roundups drawing on the shohin standard of roughly 20 cm, or 8 inches, from pot rim to apex. MVBC also brought a display table to the Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute's members' opening reception for the "Kimono!" exhibition in June 2018, showing the club's reach beyond the meeting room and into the regional arts community.

All MVBC meetings are open to prospective members, and tomorrow's program is no exception. The club's philosophy, borrowed from the late John Naka, keeps the focus grounded: "The object is not to make the tree look like a bonsai, but to make a bonsai look like a tree."

Reach the club at mohawkvalleybonsai@gmail.com, through their Facebook page, or at mvbonsai.com. Directory contacts Cathy Brown (cdbdesign68@gmail.com) and Deverie Hunt (18blackflowers@gmail.com) are also listed for the club.