@Norcalkbonsai
I'll try to keep this short.
I wasn't too worried about the horticulture, I had no doubt the contorted quince would survive. I have 'Contorted White' myself, I am very familiar with its growth habits.
The vast majority of exposed root bonsai I've seen exhibited in North America are painful, ugly eyesores, horticultural atrocities foisted upon an all too uncritical public. They look like crap. My comment was in an effort to help you avoid creating another atrocity.
I think your clump has great potential, or I would have simply said; "That's nice". and moved on to a different thread.
Although I do it myself, many get too hung up on which side of a bonsai is "front" way too early in the process of moving from nursery stock, to pre-bonsai, to show ready bonsai. It is typical for the "front" to change many times in the early history of a bonsai. But to work our trees we do tend to pick a front, as long as you know it will change in the future, it is a good exercise.
I think your best option is to treat this tree as a multiple trunk clump forest. The cultivar 'Contorted White' will constantly throw many new suckers from the roots, it is almost impossible to keep this one as a single trunk bonsai. Right now your clump is too congested to give you a forest feel. I would try to reduce the number of trunks to something less than 12 trunks. The exact number is not important, just get some of the visual clutter out of the photos. Each time you remove a trunk, the ideal "Front" will change.
First remove the trunks that are too straight. In the photos I marked a few I thought were too straight, but do a real life assessment, don't just follow my photo edit, see if removing the marked trunks will open up the view into the clump and get rid of boring straight trunks.
The strength of the 'Contorted White' is the contorted behavior, so keep no straight lines if possible.
I put a question mark on your largest trunk. A forest has good variation in trunk diameters to help with creating depth. The largest trunk though looks too straight. I would debate a while, but decide whether to keep it or get rid of it in favor of trunks with more movement. I would for the moment try to keep it.
you also have a couple trunks with very horizontal branches that cross over your view of the clump. This is not a problem in the uppermost third of the forest, but is is an issue when the branches cross in front of your view of the lower third of the trunks and the nebari. These crossing branches have to go.
The "forest" needs to be thinned before choosing a front.
Then after the front has been chosen, one needs to be deliberate with designing the roots. More on roots in next post.
