MABA 2008 Convention News

Registrations for the MABA2008 Convention will be accepted beginning Tuesday, January 15, 2008. Any registrations received prior to January 15 will be rejected. Go to www.maba2008.org and scroll down on the home page for the link to registration.

The convention will be held from Thursday, June 12 through Sunday, June 15, 2008 at the Marten House Hotel and Lilly Conference Center located on West 86th Street in Indianapolis, Indiana and is hosted by the Indianapolis Bonsai Club.

There will be bonsai on exhibit (judged and non-judged), exhibit critiques, demos, workshops, raffles, auctions, banquet, over 3,900 square feet of vendors and more ...

Featured artists include:

• Danny Use from Belgium and creator of the Ginkgo Award for Excellence in bonsai design and owner of the Ginkgo Bonsai Center Bonsai Nursery
• Steve Pilacik is known as the "American Pine Master" and owns the Matsu Momiji Bonsai Nursery
• Dana Quattlebaum is the Resident Artist and Production Manager of Brussel's Bonsai Nursery
• Matt Ouwinga is an up and coming bonsai artist who has studied in Japan under renowned Bonsai Master Kunio Kobayashi
• Andy Smith has collected, trained and sold bonsai specimen material for many years and owns Golden Arrow Bonsai in Deadwood, SD
• David Kreutz is a graduate of the three year Satsuki care and culture classes at Eldorado Bonsai and he is certified as a first level instructor by the Japan Satsuki Association
• Mark Fields has been practicing the art of bonsai for over 40 years and is the owner of Bonsai by Fields
• Mike Devore is widely known for his tropical bonsai material and owns Northridge Tropical Bonsai Nursery
• Simon Feng has been trained in the Chinese "clip and grow" school and has practiced bonsai for over 20 years, first in Vancouver, then Toronto and now Indianapolis.

Please continue to check www.maba2008.org for updates and additional information about the MABA2008 Convention.

January 2008

Welcome to 2008. The Mid-America Bonsai Alliance in partnership with our host club the Indianapolis Bonsai Club look forward to seeing you at our next convention in June of 2008. Click on the link to www.maba2008.org for all the details and information on being a part of this event in June. They will have a number of different artists to work with and I am sure they will have some great material in those workshops. As always there will be a large number of vendors at the convention to help you find whatever you may have been looking for to feed your bonsai desires.

Please consider attending this convention as it is centrally located in our region and except for the far reaches of the MABA region you are probably within a 4 to 6 hour drive away. And everyone knows you can get a lot more bonsai stuff in your car than you can get on a plane. Not only that if you have never been to the Indianapolis Speedway, June is a great time to visit as the Indy 500 will have been recently completed and the NASCAR race is still months away, so it is a great time to visit the speedway and its museum without all the crowds.

For those of you that do not know much about the Mid-America Bonsai Alliance, it is a group of clubs based around the central part of the United States and our main purpose is to promote the use of plant species that are native to this region to be used as bonsai and to provide a bonsai convention close to home that provides good value for your money. We try to hold a convention every other year and move its location within the region so that all clubs that are within the MABA organization have a chance to host. These conventions are a good fundraiser for your local clubs as the host club keeps 65% of all profits from the convention. This can be a real boost to your club and the activities that your club can do with these funds. The MABA board will be looking for potential hosts for the year 2010 convention and now is the time to start discussing with your club members about considering hosting the next convention. I will be honest there is some planning work that needs to take place and then there is the work during the convention, but the payoff is and has been a large amount of money that is generated for your local club. Recent conventions have generated over $10,000.00 for the hosting clubs. Imagine what your club could do with this influx of capital. So please have discussions with your club members and consider being a host club in 2010.

Best Regards,

Ron Fortmann

If you have any comments or questions as always, please let me, or any of the other board members know your concerns.

Ron Fortmann, President, e-mail: mabapres@charter.net, phone: 262-490-8733
Helene Magruder, Vice President, e-mail: finewine@dwx.com, phone: 515-961-2323
Janine Catchpole, Secretary, e-mail: J9-Catchpole@comcast .net, phone: 217-494-8510
Sharon Schmidt, Treasurer, e-mail: sschmidt27@wi.rr.com, phone: 414-540-0123