Building Abundant Success!!© with Sabrina-Marie
Business:Management
Episode 2347: Pearl Fryar ~ WSJ, LA Times, A Man Named Pearl, Inspiring Goodwill thru His Nat'l Art Topiary Garden
Oprah, Wall Street Journal, LA Times ~ My interview with Pearl Fryar is inspiring & the documentary is a must see. The Bill and Melinda gates Foundation supports his story, Oprah & many others major media reviews do also. not to mention the millions who visit is nursery from all over the world.
Pearl Fryar started making his Topiary Garden in 1984 in a successful bid to win a prestigious local competition. He taught himself to prune and shape the trees and shrubs he had planted in his 3 acre garden, using a petrol-driven hedge trimmer and starting with a few plants. Working from his imagination, Fryar coaxed over 100 specimens of more than 20 different trees and plants, including holly, yew and juniper, into fantastic shapes, hearts, animals and abstract forms.
Pearl has passed his art on to a NEW Generation of topiary Artists to maintain his Garden.
EVEN Today, it is a National Tourist Attraction!!
When Pearl Fryar and his wife sought to buy a house in an all-white neighborhood of Bishopville, SC, they were dissuaded with the explanation that Black people don t keep up their yards. Remarkably, instead of fueling bitterness and anger, this comment motivated Pearl to win Bishopville's Yard of the Month award and, eventually, to transform his ordinary suburban yard into a horticultural wonderland. The topiary garden s centerpiece emblazons both its message and Pearl s own philosophy: Love, Peace, and Goodwill.
Pearl Fryar is an African-American born in Clinton, North Carolina, Pearl was the son of a sharecropper. Since the early 1980s, Pearl Fryar has been creating fantastic topiary at his garden in Bishopville, South Carolina. Living sculptures, Pearl s topiaries are astounding feats of artistry and horticulture. Many of the plants in Pearl s garden were rescued from the compost pile at local nurseries. With Pearl s patience and skilled hands, these throw aways have thrived and have been transformed into wonderful abstract shapes. Pearl Fryar and his garden are now internationally recognized and have been the subject of numerous newspaper and magazine articles, television shows, and even a documentary, A Man Named Pearl. Today, the Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden draws visitors from around the globe.
Visitors to the Pearl Fryar Topiary Garden experience a place that is alternately beautiful, whimsical, educational, and inspiring. Pearl s garden contains over 300 individual plants, and few are spared from his skilled trimming. His extraordinary topiary is complemented by his junk art sculptures placed throughout the garden. 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.
A MAN NAMED PEARL chronicles the story of Pearl s magical garden as well as his extraordinary life, both of which serve as inspirations to his family, his community, and the thousands of visitors who come to experience Pearl s world each year. The film traces Pearl s journey from a small town sharecropper s son to an internationally-acclaimed artist, focusing in particular on his position as the celebrated cultural and spiritual icon of his impoverished town. Now 68, the soft-spoken Pearl has just one wish for all those who wander through his living art; they must leave feeling differently than when they arrived.
"It's the one time in my life ignorance paid off," chuckles Pearl Fryar, a humble man with no eduction in horticulture who, after years of dedicated work, created an astonishing garden in the economically depressed town of Bishopville, S.C. But A Man Named Pearl doesn't just wander among the three acres of Fryar's beautifully sculpted trees and bushes, all created from plants Fryar rescued from the scrap heaps of local nurseries.
The documentary shows how his singular vision spread out to affect the community, leading to Fryar being commissioned by art museums and turning Bishopville into a topiary mecca. But despite reviving the economic fortunes of the town, getting national recognition and free food from his local waffle house, and even becoming an unlikely sex symbol, Fryar remains thoughtful, warm, and dynamic, eager to help students and troubled youth discover their unexplored potential. A Man Named Pearl carefully balances the mysteries of the creative impulse with the fundamental humaneness of this outsider artist, resulting in an engaging, rewarding portrait--a perfect midpoint between The Parrots of Telegraph Hill and Crumb.
© 2023 Building Abundant Success!!
2023 All Rights Reserved
Join Me on ~ iHeart Media @ https://tinyurl.com/iHeartBAS
Spot Me on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/yxuy23ba
Amazon ~ https://tinyurl.com/AmzBAS
Audacy: https://tinyurl.com/BASAud
Create your
podcast in
minutes
It is Free