Midwest Bonsai Society hosts Mauro Stemberger styling demo and auction
Mauro Stemberger’s May 18 demo at the Chicago Botanic Garden ended with the styled tree going to auction, turning wiring practice into a buying opportunity.
The biggest draw at the Midwest Bonsai Society’s May general meeting was not just Mauro Stemberger’s styling demo. After he worked a tree through initial approach, design, wiring and questions and answers at Burnstein Hall in the Chicago Botanic Garden’s Regenstein Center, the finished tree went under the hammer, turning one night into both a lesson and an acquisition opportunity.
That setup gave the Monday, May 18 meeting a practical edge that bonsai clubs understand well. Attendees were not watching a passive lecture from the sidelines. They saw Stemberger make the early-stage decisions that matter most, then had the chance to bid on the tree afterward. For a society that uses its calendar to keep members active, that mix of education and auction was the point.
The Midwest Bonsai Society, based at the Chicago Botanic Garden, says it promotes public awareness, cultivation and the living art of bonsai. Its meetings are held at the Regenstein Center in Glencoe, Illinois, in Burnstein Hall or Alsdorf Auditorium, and the May program fit squarely into that mission. The club also used the month’s exhibit to frame the season as a progression, not a one-off showcase.
At the Garden, the society’s Spring Show & Sale marks 20 years of sharing the hobby with the Midwest community. The May exhibit was described as an instructional show with vendors and demonstrations, and as a place for trees-in-training that were not yet ready for the August exhibition. That matters because the society’s August show is centered on the Chicago Botanic Garden’s permanent collection and brings in trees from enthusiasts across the country.
Stemberger’s résumé explains why the society made him the centerpiece. Born in 1978 in Feltre, Italy, he works as both an architect and a bonsai artist. He got into bonsai at 14 through the local Feltre bonsai club, later became a recognized BCI bonsai instructor in 2008, and served as president of the Italian bonsai association UBI from 2008 to 2010. His honors include the 2021 BCI Excellence Award at the UBI-IBS show in Arco.
The May meeting also sat in the middle of a busy run of club programming. June was set to focus on azaleas with Dave Kreutz, July to center on wiring specimen trees, and August to shift into a work session preparing trees for the exhibition. Taken together, the calendar showed a society using Stemberger’s demo not as an isolated showcase, but as the sharpest point in a season built to move members from styling technique to show-ready trees.
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