Masahiko Kimura and Bonsai as Living Sculpture

The term Living Sculpture can be applied to a number of categories such as Land Art, Environmental Art, and Bonsai. Today, we look into the life of the "Magical Technician of Kindai Shuppan"; Masahiko Kimura. Bonsai art is no easy task, people have to intensively twist and coil wires into young plants to inhibit or shape their growth, at the same time leaves and roots have to be trimmed for the tree to grow into miniaturized proportions. At the early age of 15, Kimura became the apprentice of bonsai master Motosuke Hamano of Toju-en Bonsai Garden. His great skill in conceptualizing the growth pattern of trees became his catalyst into the bonsai society's greatest. He was also able to swiftly move past critiques who said his works were widely controversial at first.

In his early years though,  Kimura did not have the entire support of the Japanese Bonsai community because he desired unconventional forms for his art. His very first workshop was at the 1987 Golden State Federation Bonsai Convention in Anaheim, California. He has been giving workshops on Bonsai ever since, and has grown in popularity over the international art scene. Most of the trees he designed were Juniperu Chinensis, but he expanded his trade to encompass different kinds of local and foreign trees over the span of his long career. Kimura had won many awards for his bonsai sculptures, such as the Prime Minister's Award four times (4 years), and the Minister of Education Award in 1999. He was also the teacher of popularized bonsai artist; Marco Invernizzi.

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Kirigami, Sekkei and Comlex Origami Sculpture

Robert Lang, Meguro Toshiyuki and a few others developed a methodological system of origami paper folding called Technical Origami or Origami Sekkei. Unlike normal day-to-day origami folding, Sekkei Origami is more likened to an artform, specifically the artform of three dimensional sculpture. The creative output of Sekkei Origami can be characterized by complicated figures composed of well-formed details. Examples could include multi-jointed subjects with complex extremities such as toes, legs, tails and wings. Most of the usual patterns involved with this type of origami sculpting begins with something called the crease pattern, which is basically the overall layout of the creases needed to form the final model. Many origami sculptors develop their own compositions and designs by structural trial and error.

Surprisingly enough there are also computer programs that people use to aid them with structuring the comples diagrams of these origami types. Such include Doodle- which is used to create a photoshop file that has all the steps and figures needed to create a figure, and Treemaker- a program used to design a pattern of the final model.

Origami Sculpture (Hercules Beetle) by Robert Lang

Another alternate version of origami sculpture is Kirigami, where people make use of slices and cuts on the paper to form even more complicated joint systems and details. Because Kirigami includes the ability to cut creases, it gives a bit more flexibility to the artist, but makes each work more complicated for other people to replicate.

Origami may not be considered as fine or museum-type sculpture as a whole genre, but there are several artists out there who have mastered the art of folding, stacking and manipulating paper to the extent that galleries and shows have commissioned them to be a part of their collections. Origami has reached new heights in the world of sculpture, transcending price, time and even digital media. 

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