Joi Aoki is a 3rd generation Japanese-American, born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. From a tender age, she was taught the concepts of the traditional Japanese garden while working alongside her father in the family’s landscaping business. She learned that the Japanese garden is a place of harmony, balance, and natural form. It is a place of subtlety, a place of contradictions and imperatives, a microcosm of nature. Her work reflects the beauty of creation in the perfectly balanced universe in which we live. Since taking over her father’s business, she continues to produce designs that are firmly centered on these tenets. Mastering these concepts and techniques continues to fuel her drive to bring Oriental beauty to the Occidental world.
Moving naturally from the large-scale art of the Japanese garden, Joi has turned to sculpture. Trees have caught her attention. Not the large, lush trees of the well-watered forest, or the trees that get regular attention and care. It is the trees that do not have ideal circumstances that captivate her. Trees that grow on outcroppings of stone, with little soil, and sparse water. Trees that survive facing the most insurmountable of obstacles and hardships imaginable. Trees whose branches, worn bark and wind-sculpted foliage give evidence of their struggle. Trees that are survivors, and in their struggle to survive we see their beauty. She has captured their struggle, and their beauty, in sculpture that reflects profound respect for life that endures in the face of all challenges.
Award winner for sculpture at 2011 Sandy Art Show, Sandy, Utah
Award winner at 2011 Art in Kayenta Festival, Kayenta, Utah
Currently on display at Metal Art Gallery 873 in Kayenta, Utah
Currently on display at The Utah Museum of Fine Art Gift Store
“Trying to duplicate nature is, as far as I’m concerned, nearly impossible. We can only make reminders of it. This earth and the things that grow and emerge from it are the things that will stop us in our tracks and make us want to capture this brief breath-taking moment, somehow, in whatever way we have at hand.” - Joi Aoki