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Arthur
Joura |
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Arthur
Joura is the Bonsai Curator at The North
Carolina Arboretum, an inter-institutional facility of the University
of North Carolina, located in the scenic Southern Appalachian Mountains
of western North Carolina. The Arboretum became involved with bonsai in
1992, when the donation of a bonsai collection from a family in Butner, NC
was accepted. Joura, who was at that time working on staff as a nursery
technician, was selected to manage the collection and develop the
Arboretum’s bonsai program. Joura’s educational
background is in fine art, having studied at The
School of Visual Arts and The
Art Student’s League in New York City. His bonsai education began at The
National Bonsai and Penjing Museum in Washington, DC, under the
tutelage of Museum Curator Robert “Bonsai Bob” Drechsler and his
assistant, Daniel Chiplis. Joura furthered his studies with personal
instruction from Japanese American bonsai master Yuji Yoshimura, “The
Father of American Bonsai”. Joura was Yoshimura’s last student, and the
elder artist’s lasting influence on Joura’s bonsai philosophy cannot be
overstated. In 1998, Joura spent one
month in Japan as an official student to the Nippon Bonsai Association, a
rare educational honor arranged by Dr. John Creech, Director Emeritus of the
U.S. National Arboretum. During that time, Susumu Nakamura, President
of the Shonan School of Bonsai and a Director of the Nippon Bonsai
Association, hosted Joura and provided personal instruction. The
relationship has continued, with Nakamura being hosted by the Arboretum on
two occasions to provide educational programs and consultation. Over the course of the
past 14 years, Joura has built the bonsai program to be one of the
Arboretum’s strongest components. The Arboretum has hosted visits by many
of the leading bonsai authorities in the U.S. and the world, making it a
center for bonsai education in the Southeast. Joura began teaching bonsai
at the Arboretum in 1995, conducting several annual educational classes and
workshops that have become perennial public favorites. He has also toured
the Southeast extensively, providing bonsai lectures and demonstrations to
bonsai societies, garden clubs, botanical gardens, master gardener
symposia, schools and civic organizations from Florida to Maryland. He has
written numerous bonsai articles published in newspapers and magazines, and
has been featured on radio and television programs as a bonsai authority. In 1996, Joura organized
the first Carolina Bonsai Expo, a show which featured the work of bonsai
enthusiasts from clubs in North and South Carolina, as well as selected
pieces from the Arboretum’s bonsai collection. This initial offering was
so successful that it has become an annual event that now showcases bonsai
work from 10 different clubs in five different states: NC, SC, GA, VA and
TN. There are educational programs by internationally recognized guest
artists, demonstrations by local bonsai authorities, a lively auction of
bonsai and related materials, and a marketplace with regional bonsai
vendors. The exhibit of selected bonsai from the Arboretum’s collection
has become a distinguishing feature of the event, as Joura has conducted an
ongoing exploration of innovative forms of bonsai display. Under Joura’s
continued management the Expo, now in its nineth year, attracts over 3,000
visitors for the two-day event and is recognized as the premier annual
bonsai show in the Southeast. In 1999, design work
began on a garden for the display of the bonsai collection, to be located
on a prominent site in the heart of the Arboretum, adjacent to the
Education Center. Joura was charged with the responsibility of writing the
concept statement that would guide the design process and then given
leadership of the team that would work on the project. The design team
consisted of an architect, a lead landscape architect, a certified Japanese
garden designer, key members of the Arboretum staff specializing in
landscape architecture, interpretation, design, construction, and
gardening, and several volunteers with advanced technical knowledge in the
fields of landscape architecture and garden design. The bonsai garden
design process lasted three years. The North Carolina
Arboretum’s bonsai garden, promises to contribute a new chapter to the ongoing story of
bonsai development in the United States. Its final design reflects the same
vision of a synthesis of Eastern and Western aesthetic values, focused on
the universal appreciation of plants, that has become increasingly evident
in Joura’s curatorial work with the Arboretum’s bonsai collection.
This statement can sum
up Joura’s bonsai philosophy: “At
its best, bonsai is living art, expressing in miniature an experience of
nature.” In his development of
the Arboretum’s collection (which now numbers over 200 specimens, plus
many others in production), Joura constantly seeks to forge connections
between the art of bonsai and the Arboretum’s mission to promote
appreciation of the flora and culture of the Southern Appalachians. He has
introduced to bonsai culture more than 50 different species native to
western North Carolina, and created several tray landscapes depicting
well-known natural sites of the region. Perhaps of even greater
significance, the model for the Arboretum’s bonsai plantings as Joura
styles them is not the bonsai depicted in books and magazines, but rather
the example of nature as represented by the wild trees of the forests and
mountain tops of the Blue Ridge region. Joura feels that this is a return
to the roots of bonsai as an artistic expression, not of a certain culture,
but of an individual’s experience of the natural world around them.
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