I feel very blessed that artists in painting and photography add or accept me as a friend on Facebook and let me publish their pictures for free or write on their works. Whenever an article of mine is published I post its link on the page of the artist it is about and their other artist friends add me. My early interest in bonsai led me to join online groups and write about some of them, and then I stumbled on this network of artists who make artificial bonsai. My article on two of them came out in our Life section.
By networking with bonsai culturists, I met Zambales native Eryx Reyes, 41. I was added by his wife Karoll whose photos I liked. Among those were pictures of Eryx’s drawings of bonsai, which were an offshoot of his love for the Japanese art of miniatured trees. I lost no time in adding him to my friends.
Like the other bonsai enthusiasts and painters, I interviewed Reyes through private messages on FB. He asked his child to write his answers to my questions on bond paper and he posted a picture of it on chat.
He described himself as simple, quiet and shy. “In elementary school, I learned wood carving, drawing and watercolor painting. But I also practiced playing the guitar, harmonics, the bugle and drums.”
He tried sports in high school—table tennis, chess, baseball and basketball. He took up architecture in college, joined a band, and went into mountaineering and rifle shooting. He said he “fell in love and became close to nature when mountain climbing.”
Love for nature often draws a person to photography, but the high cost of that art drove him to devote himself to bonsai. Up to now, he says, he is “still freshly discovering the beauty of nature” around him.