SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Yard work doesn't thrill many people, but Pearl Fryar was an artist with hedge trimmers.
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PEARL FRYAR: I actually look at plants as a means or a way of expressing my creative ability. Pruning is the same as painting to an artist that paint.
SIMON: Pearl Fryar was a renowned topiary artist who was called the Picasso of plants. He sculpted them into fantastical, gravity-defining shapes - spiraling bushes, diamonds, mushrooms, fish bones and more. Admirers traveled from around the world to Bishopville, South Carolina, about an hour's drive east of Columbia, to see his garden.
Pearl Fryar died earlier this month at the age of 86, and his friend and fellow topiary artist Michael Gibson joins us now. Mr. Gibson, thanks so much for being with us.
MICHAEL GIBSON: Thank you so much for having me.
SIMON: And I gather that as we speak, you were at the South Carolina State Museum, trimming some of Pearl Fryar's artwork.
GIBSON: That is correct.
SIMON: What's on display there?
GIBSON: Yeah. On either side of the steps of the entrance of the South Carolina State Museum - Pearl was commissioned back in 1997 to create a topiary garden in front of the museum. So he has these probably about 30-foot-tall Leyland cypress that has the fish bone technique that became a signature style, where he opens up the inside of the shrub or the tree and extends the branches outwards, opening up - making it look like a fish skeleton. There's some Yaupon hollies, some hedges that are just sculpted to perfection with fine lines and a very smoothness, which was key to Pearl's style.
SIMON: What do you think made his art so extraordinary?
GIBSON: What Pearl would say all the time was, it wasn't just the aesthetic that he was creating. It wasn't just making the sculptures just to make them look beautiful. He was creating a feeling. He was able to sculpt these trees and shrubs into abstract shape that invoked a feeling of love and made you feel more peaceful when you walked around his garden.
SIMON: Well, let me ask you about his background, 'cause I gather that Pearl Fryar was the son of a sharecropper, drafted into the Army, served in Korea as a chemical weapons specialist. Then he worked as a production engineer in a can factory. What led him to gardening?
GIBSON: It all started when he wanted to buy a nice home in a nice neighborhood. And this is the South in the '80s. And this is in Lee County. And there's a lot of racial tension. He wanted to get a home in an all-white neighborhood, and he was denied because they felt he couldn't upkeep his yard. They said, Black people don't upkeep their yard, and he was going to bring down the property value, you know?
So he kind of bought some land and built a home in a predominant Black neighborhood and started beautifying his property by, you know, creating a roundabout driveway and hiring landscapers. That's when things started to click. He went to a local nursery and had the opportunity of seeing a demonstration being performed on the topiary and kind of got addicted to it and found that it was his peace. You know, it gave him some stress relief when he got off of working these 12-hour shifts at the Coca-Cola canning plant.
SIMON: I gather you were the first artist in residence at Pearl Fryar's Topiary Garden back in 2021. How do you think your friend influenced you?
GIBSON: Oh, Pearl had a tremendous influence on my life. You know, I didn't hear about Pearl until around, like, 2014, but I had been doing topiary and sculpting plants since I was 7. My idea of topiary was just, you know, just classical topiary - geometric shapes, spirals. I had no clue that you can do all the different type of abstract forms that Pearl was doing, let alone a Black topiary artist was just unheard of.
From that day on, when I heard of Pearl, I knew exactly what I wanted to be. I found my purpose. I knew I wanted to be a topiary artist and help beautify the world with topiary. And, you know, I finally had the opportunity of meeting him in 2016 and, you know, and seeing these 30-foot-tall sailing ships of Turloso junipers, you know - how unique he was able to bend branches and train them. I just loved that. He kind of poured into me - really spoke to me to want to continue on and follow in his footsteps. So from there, I return every year - and proposed to my wife in his garden.
SIMON: Oh.
GIBSON: Pearl would give me so many great tips, and he always said, be creative. Don't try so hard to make it look like what it used to be. Be creative and show me what you can do. And I did (laughter). I did. I took that advice and ran with it. And Pearl came out one day, and he gave me that nod of approval and said, this looks great. You know, looks like I did it, you know, with a nice chuckle (laughter).
SIMON: Topiary artist Michael Gibson, speaking about Pearl Fryar. Thanks so much for being with us.
GIBSON: Thank you so much for having me.
(SOUNDBITE OF BELLE CHEN'S "PAPAYA TREE: PART I") Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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