Arthur Joura

Arthur Joura has been the Bonsai Curator at The North Carolina Arboretum, in Asheville, NC, since the inception of the bonsai program in 1992. Joura’s educational background is in fine art. 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.

Over the course of the past 11 years Joura has built the bonsai program to be one of the NC Arboretum’s strongest components. In 1996 he organized the first Carolina Bonsai Expo, a show featuring 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 5 different states: NC, SC, GA, VA and TN. Under Joura’s continued management the Expo, now in its eighth year, attracts over 3,500 visitors for the 2-day event and is recognized as the premier annual bonsai show of the Southeast.

In 1999 design work began on a garden for the display of the NC Arboretum’s bonsai collection. 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 worked on the project. The bonsai garden design process lasted three years. Currently under construction, The NC 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.