AMAZING MINIATURE WORLDS - BONSAI MEETS MODELMANIA
Tiny treats from Japan: Tending to a bonsai tree is a labour of love that takes plenty of TLC, but Japanese artist Takanori Aiba has taken the whole concept a quantum leap into the model world, by combining live trees with blow-your-mind superdetail scale models. Cool magazine in Japan Aiba has worked for many years in the fashion magazine world, especially with Popeye, a super-cool mag aimed at street-smart Japanese males. However, it’s his model work we’re looking at here, and that hearks back to traditional Japanese imagery and botany more than the uber-fashions of today. Oriental philosophy Aiba has spent years on these beautiful works, described by him as: “an experimental approach to turn out a modern bonsai style that portrays the beauty of spiritual accordance between human and nature in miniature.” That’s a bit of a mouthful perhaps, but words are earned by results, and Aiba hits it big in that department, and comes as a breeze of fresh air in the conservative world of bonsai...