Recommended Viewing

Videos Featuring the Arboretum’s Bonsai Collection

The Arboretum’s collection and curator have been featured in a number of different videos over the years. Some were created in house or by professional videographers and capture Arthur creating and presenting programs for Arboretum audiences. Still others preserve styling demonstrations Arthur presented when traveling to bonsai clubs and societies up and down the Eastern United States. Highlighted here is a changing playlist of videos sharing the trees and techniques that characterize a distinctive approach to the art of bonsai.

 

RECOMMENDED VIewing

Featured
The American Elm
The American Elm

From a simple seed grows a mighty tree — and a great new video by Ben Kirkland, content creator of the popular YouTube channel Appalachian Bonsai. He documents Arthur Joura in the 2019 styling demonstration that was the making of The American Elm.

A Radical Redesign: Tanuki
A Radical Redesign: Tanuki

Life, death, rebirth. Bonsai curator Arthur Joura undertakes an unusual and challenging redesign of an old juniper bonsai from the Arboretum's collection. The work was recorded live and edited by Visiting Artist Ben Kirkland, creator of the YouTube channel Appalachian Bonsai.

Creating a Tray Landscape
Creating a Tray Landscape

In Creating a Tray Landscape, Arboretum Bonsai Curator Arthur Joura creates a new planting featuring a lone weathered hornbeam and woody shrubs assembled with sculptural rocks on a natural stone slab. It makes for a scene evocative of the craggy Southern Appalachian highlands.

Repotting the River of Dreams
Repotting the River of Dreams

An iconic tray landscape — The River of Dreams — is de-constructed and its individual elements are reassembled to create a new composition, which is then replanted into a new and larger American-made container.

Out of the Box
Out of the Box

This second video of the series, "Out of the Box," shows what happens in several years when a bonsai-in-training is ready to take another significant step toward becoming a presentable piece.

Collecting a Field-Grown Maple
Collecting a Field-Grown Maple

Over the past twenty-five years the Arboretum's Bonsai Curator Arthur Joura has been refining techniques for producing small trees with large trunks, demonstrated in this new video documenting part of the process.

“Arthur has been consistent over the years in carefully studying the form and growth habits of trees in his own environment, and defining an aesthetic based on his observations. He is a talented painter as well as a bonsai artist, and so I will adapt a term from the two-dimensional art world in describing his work at the Arboretum as creating a ‘School of American Bonsai Realism.’ His teaching, writing, and extensive interaction with the bonsai community at large through programs and events is a powerful statement about his and the Arboretum’s importance in the bonsai world.”
— David de Groot Curator Emeritus, Pacific Rim Bonsai Collection/Pacific Bonsai Museum