Pearl Fryar

Last updated

Pearl Fryar
Born (1939-12-04) December 4, 1939 (age 84)
Clinton, North Carolina, United States
OccupationTopiary artist

Pearl Fryar (born December 4, 1939) is an American topiary artist living in Bishopville, South Carolina.

Contents

Biography

Garden Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden, Bishopville, SC, US (11).jpg
Garden

Pearl Fryar was born on December 4, 1939, in Clinton, North Carolina, to a sharecropper family. [1] In the late 1950s, he attended the North Carolina College in Durham. [2] He served in the military and was in the Korean War. After leaving the military, he moved to Queens, New York. In 1975, he began work as a factory engineer at a Coca-Cola soda can factory in Bishopville until his retirement in 2006. [3] [4] [2]

Initially, Fryar wanted to move into Bishopville's city limits, however he was blocked from purchasing a home in the area due to white residents thinking he wouldn't maintain his property and instead built on the outskirts of town. [4] He began working in his yard to prove his white neighbors wrong with "throwaway" plants rescued from the compost pile at local nurseries and received the 'Yard of the Month' in 1985. [3] [5]

Around 1988, Fryar began trimming the evergreen plants around his yard into unusual shapes. In addition to the boxwood and yew found there originally, he began transplanting holly, fir, loblolly pine and other plants as they became available. His living sculptures are astounding feats of artistry and horticulture. Pearl Fryar and his garden are now internationally recognized and have been the subject of numerous newspaper and magazine articles, television shows. [5]

In 2006, the documentary A Man Named Pearl was produced by Scott Galloway and Brent Pierson about his work. [5]

Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden

Fishbone tree Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden, Bishopville, SC, US (21).jpg
Fishbone tree

Pearl's garden is a living testament to one man's firm belief in the results of positive thinking, hard work, and perseverance, and his dedication to spreading a message of "love, peace, and goodwill."[ citation needed ] and today, the Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden draws visitors from around the globe. [1] Visitors to the Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden experience a place that is alternately beautiful, whimsical, educational, and inspiring. Pearl's garden contains over 400 individual plants and is integrated with "junk art" sculptures. [6] The aesthetics of Fryar's work are a departure from traditional topiary work and are considered abstract, inventive, and free-form. [7]

In 2007, the Friends of Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden and the Garden Conservancy formed a partnership with Pearl Fryar to preserve and maintain the Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden and to further Pearl's message of inspiration and hope. [8] In 2008, a scholarship was created by Fryar and the Friends of Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden to provide for students with lower grades. [4] The nonprofit dissolved in 2018. [9]

In 2021, Mike Gibson, a topiary artist from Youngstown, Ohio who had first met Fryar in 2016, began tending the garden due to Fryar's declining health and the COVID-19 pandemic. [10] [11] His position is funded by a $50,000 Central Carolina Community Foundation grant. [10] The garden received the grant after Jane Przybysz, Executive Director at the McKissick Museum in Columbia noticed the decline in the garden's maintenance. [12]

During 2020-2022, a new nonprofit, The Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden, Inc. was established to work collaboratively and support the preservation of the artistic and horticultural legacy of Pearl Fryar. [9]

Awards and accolades

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Garden</span> Planned space for displaying plants and other forms of nature

A garden is a planned space, usually outdoors, set aside for the cultivation, display, and enjoyment of plants and other forms of nature. The single feature identifying even the wildest wild garden is control. The garden can incorporate both natural and artificial materials.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bishopville, South Carolina</span> Town in South Carolina, United States

Bishopville is a town in Lee County, South Carolina, United States. The population was 3,471 at the 2010 census. It is the county seat of Lee County.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Topiary</span> Horticulture practice to shape trees and shrubs

Topiary is the horticultural practice of training perennial plants by clipping the foliage and twigs of trees, shrubs and subshrubs to develop and maintain clearly defined shapes, whether geometric or fanciful. The term also refers to plants which have been shaped in this way. As an art form it is a type of living sculpture. The word derives from the Latin word for an ornamental landscape gardener, topiarius, a creator of topia or "places", a Greek word that Romans also applied to fictive indoor landscapes executed in fresco.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Philip Simmons</span> American blacksmith

Philip Simmons was an American artisan and blacksmith specializing in the craft of ironwork. Simmons spent 78 years as a blacksmith, focusing on decorative iron work. When he began his career, blacksmiths in Charleston made practical, everyday household objects, such as horseshoes. By the time he retired 77 years later, the craft was considered an art form rather than a practical profession.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sculpture garden</span> Outdoor garden or park featuring artistic sculptures

A sculpture garden or sculpture park is an outdoor garden or park which includes the presentation of sculpture, usually several permanently sited works in durable materials in landscaped surroundings.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">South Carolina State Museum</span> United States historic place

The South Carolina State Museum is a museum dedicated to the history of South Carolina. It has four floors of permanent and changing exhibits, a digital dome planetarium, 4D interactive theater, and an observatory. The State Museum is located along the banks of the Congaree River in downtown Columbia, South Carolina. It is the largest museum in the state, and is a Smithsonian Affiliate and part of the American Alliance of Museums. Positioned on an old shipping canal that dates back to pre-Civil War times, the museum is widely recognized as a resource for South Carolina history and lifestyle. The museum opened on October 29, 1988, and is housed in what it calls its largest artifact the former Columbia Mills Building, listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. When the mill opened in 1894, manufacturing cotton duck cloth, it was the first completely electric textile mill in the world. It was also the first major industrial installation for the General Electric corporation. On certain levels of the museum, the original flooring has been kept intact, distinguishable by the textile brads and rings that became embedded in the floor while it was still being used as a mill. The South Carolina Confederate Relic Room & Military Museum is located within the Columbia Mills Building and is the oldest museum exhibit in Columbia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Brindavan Gardens</span> Garden in Karnataka, India

The Brindavan Gardens is a garden located 12 k.ms from the city of Mysore in the Mandya District of the Indian State of Karnataka. It lies adjoining the Krishnarajasagara Dam which is built across the river Kaveri. The work on laying out this garden was started in the year 1927 and completed in 1932. Visited by close to 2 million tourists per year, the garden is one of the major attractions of Srirangapatna. Sir Mirza Ismail, the Deewan of Mysore, a man with a penchant for gardens, founded the Brindavan Gardens and built the Cauvery River high-level canal to irrigate 120,000 acres (490 km2) in modern Mandya district. The gardens were designed by German botanist and landscape designer Gustav Hermann Krumbiegel.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Franklin Park Conservatory</span> Botanical garden in Columbus, Ohio

Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens is a botanical garden and conservatory located in Columbus, Ohio. It is open daily and an admission fee is charged. Today, it is a horticultural and educational institution showcasing exotic plant collections, special exhibitions, and Dale Chihuly artworks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tree shaping</span> Use of living trees to create structures and art

Tree shaping uses living trees and other woody plants as the medium to create structures and art. There are a few different methods used by the various artists to shape their trees, which share a common heritage with other artistic horticultural and agricultural practices, such as pleaching, bonsai, espalier, and topiary, and employing some similar techniques. Most artists use grafting to deliberately induce the inosculation of living trunks, branches, and roots, into artistic designs or functional structures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Green Animals Topiary Garden</span> Topiary garden in Portsmouth, Rhode Island

The Green Animals Topiary Garden, located in Portsmouth, Rhode Island, is the oldest and most northern topiary garden in the United States. The 7-acre (28,000 m2) estate overlooks the Narragansett Bay. It contains a large collection of topiaries including eighty sculptured trees. Favorites include teddy bears, a camel, a giraffe, an ostrich, an elephant and two bears made from sculptured California privet, yew, and English boxwood. There are also pineapples, a unicorn, a reindeer, a dog and spot a horse with his rider. There are over 35 formal flowerbeds, geometric pathways, rose arbor, grape arbor, fruit trees, and vegetable and herb gardens. A greenhouse is used extensively to provide seedlings used on the estate. The 1859 Victorian Brayton house museum contains a small display of vintage kids toy and the original family furnishings. Ribbons for prize-winning dahlias and vegetables, dating from about 1915, line the walls of the gift shop. The Preservation Society of Newport County maintains it.

Ladew Topiary Gardens are nonprofit gardens with topiary located in Monkton, Maryland. The gardens were established in the 1930s by socialite and huntsman Harvey S. Ladew (1887–1976), who in 1929 had bought a 250-acre (100 ha) farm to build his estate. The house and gardens are open April through October, weekdays and weekends; an admission fee is charged.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">River Farm</span>

River Farm, permanent home to the American Horticultural Society (AHS) headquarters, is a landscape located at 7931 East Boulevard Drive, Alexandria, Virginia. The estate takes its name from a larger plot of land which formed an outlying part of George Washington's Mount Vernon estate.

Living sculpture is any type of sculpture that is created with living, growing grasses, vines, plants or trees. It can be functional and/or ornamental. There are several different types of living sculpture techniques, including topiary, sod works, tree shaping and mowing and crop art. Most living sculpture technique requires horticultural skills, such as grafting or pruning, to create the art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Richard Reames</span> American artist, arborsculptor, nurseryman, writer and public speaker

Richard C. Reames is an American artist, arborsculptor, nurseryman, writer, and public speaker. He lives and works in Williams, Oregon.

Frank S. Curto was the chief horticulturist for the Pittsburgh Department of Parks and Recreation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Wyndcliffe Court</span> House in St. Arvans, Monmouthshire

Wyndcliffe Court, 0.5 miles (0.80 km) north of the village of St. Arvans, Monmouthshire, Wales, is a Grade II* listed country house and gardens in the Arts and Crafts style, completed in 1922. The client was Charles Leigh Clay and the architect Eric Francis. The gardens were designed by Henry Avray Tipping and are included on the Cadw/ICOMOS Register of Parks and Gardens of Special Historic Interest in Wales.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Moore Farms Botanical Garden</span>

Moore Farms Botanical Garden is a botanical garden located in Lake City, South Carolina in the Pee Dee region. Founded in 2002, the garden consists of 65 acres (26 ha) of cultivated gardens and pastoral fields. It also serves as a center for research, education, and community outreach.

Martha Daniell Logan was an early American botanist who was instrumental in seed exchanges between Britain and the North American colonies. She wrote an influential gardening advice column and was a major collector of plants endemic to the Carolinas.

Charles Gaines is an American artist whose work interrogates the discourse of aesthetics, politics, and philosophy. Taking the form of drawings, photographic series and video installations, the work consistently involves the use of systems, predominantly in the form of the grid, often in combination with photography. His work is rooted in Conceptual Art – in dialogue with artists such as Sol LeWitt, Lawrence Weiner and Mel Bochner – and Gaines is committed to its tenets of engaging cognition and language. As one of the only African-American conceptual artists working in the 1970s, a time when political expressionism was a prevailing concern among African-American artists, Gaines was an outlier in his pursuit of abstraction and non-didactic approach to race and politics. There is a strong musical thread running through much of Gaines' work, evident in his repeated use of musical scores as well in his engagement with the idea of indeterminacy, as similar to John Cage and Sol LeWitt.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John A. Sibley Horticultural Center</span> Conservatory at Callaway Gardens in Pine Mountain, Georgia, U.S.

John A. Sibley Horticultural Center was a 5-acre (2.0 ha) greenhouse and conservatory within Callaway Gardens located near Pine Mountain in Harris County, Georgia, United States, 18 miles (29 km) from LaGrange, Georgia. Callaway Gardens promoted it as "one of the most advanced garden/greenhouse complexes in the world".

References

  1. 1 2 "Pearl Fryar". Laumeier Sculpture Park. Retrieved December 29, 2021.
  2. 1 2 Miniter, Brendan (August 1, 2008). "Garden Paradise: A Man Plants Seeds of Harmony". Wall Street Journal. ISSN   0099-9660 . Retrieved December 29, 2021.
  3. 1 2 "A Day in the Life of Pearl Fryar | Charleston Magazine". CHARLESTON SC |. March 26, 2019. Retrieved December 29, 2021.
  4. 1 2 3 "Fate and fortune align for Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden restoration". Carolina News and Reporter. November 30, 2021. Retrieved December 29, 2021.
  5. 1 2 3 "A Man Named Pearl (2006)", IMDb.
  6. "Shear Brilliance", Smithsonian Magazine, May 2008, p. 32.
  7. Brook, Isis; Brady, Emily (2003). "Topiary: Ethics and Aesthetics". Ethics and the Environment. 8 (1): 126–142. doi:10.2979/ETE.2003.8.1.126. ISSN   1085-6633. JSTOR   40339057.
  8. "How One Man's Simple Hobby Evolved Into a Topiary Wonderland". Treehugger. Retrieved December 29, 2021.
  9. 1 2 "Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden". sites.google.com. Retrieved April 6, 2023.
  10. 1 2 "Fate and fortune align for Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden restoration". Carolina News and Reporter. November 30, 2021. Retrieved December 29, 2021.
  11. McCray, Shamira. "Supporters of famed artist Pearl Fryar rally to save his topiary garden in Bishopville". Post and Courier. Retrieved December 29, 2021.
  12. "Efforts to Save A SC Landmark Could Play a Role in Transforming the Nation's Commemorative Landscape". South Carolina Public Radio. October 26, 2021. Retrieved December 29, 2021.