Article: OUT ON A LIMB DAN ROBINSON DEFIES BONSAI TRADITIONS TO FASHION ART OUT OF NATURE'S MUTANTS.(Lifestyle)

Shredding a tree with a chain saw is generally not a popular move in bonsai, but Dan Robinson has never been a conventional guy.

The year was 1978. A scrappy, self-taught bonsai artist, Robinson was giving one of his first demonstrations at a prestigious convention.

He pulled out a 6-foot-tall Hollywood juniper. He pulled out a 15-inch electric Toro chain saw.

The audience, used to a less vigorous pruning, gasped.

Robinson let it rip.

``They had never seen anything like it,'' he recalls. ``A lot of them said, `The tree is dead,' and left before I was done.''

The tree survived, and so has Robinson.

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