(This article reprinted with permission, featuring James T. Mason, class of 1956, appeared in the Columbus Dispatch on September 24, 2000) 

Tantalizing topiaries
Tender loving care keeps tribute to art alive and well

By Barbara Zuck
Columbus Dispatch

Georges Seurat's A Sunday on the Island of La Grande Jatte comes to verdant life in the Topiary Park.

One day in the mid-1980s, Columbus sculptor James T. Mason took a trip to Longwood Gardens, a botanical park near Philadelphia renowned for its landscapes.

Mason - and Columbus - have never been the same.

“It was late October and kind of a hazy day. The gardens reminded me of an impressionist painting. And that was the seed,” Mason recalled last Sunday while perusing his resultant creations.

The trip to Longwood, the “impression” of impressionism and Mason’s versatility as a sculptor eventually led him to create almost 80 topiary figures in the Old Deaf School Park at E. Town Street and Washington Avenue.

The topiaries, mostly made out of trimmed and shaped yew trees, re-create in three-dimensional green one of the most famous paintings of the impressionist period — Georges Seurat’s A Sunday on the Island of La Grande Jatte. in his signature pointillist style, Seurat depicted Parisians dressed in bulky Victorian-era attire gazing out onto the River Seine as if mesmerized, most standing stiffly in formal profile.

To Mason, “This painting is an icon of Western civilization. It’s about civilization and nature. It’s about the Arcadian myth.”

And so his “radical interpretation of Seurat,” as he puts it, “becomes a pun — a landscape of a painting of a landscape. The idea is to dim the connections between art, nature and civilization.”

Columbus’ topiaries make up the only topiary garden in existence based on a work of art. The park has become a favorite destination of art and nature lovers from Columbus and beyond.

Central Ohio is actually graced with two unusual public artworks that have brought fame, if not infamy, to their creators. Both bear unusual relationships to nature.

One is the topiary garden, built on land reclaimed from the crumbled remains of an Old Deaf School building designed by George Bellows Sr., father of the famous painter. Constructed in 1869, the building burned in 1981 and the area that is now the park lay in vacant disarray for seven years.

The other major artwork is Malcolm Cochran’s Field of Corn (with Osage Orange Trees), about which much has been written. Cochran’s carefully arranged rows of funereal concrete ears of corn create a silent but ongoing commentary on the ever-shrinking remnants of Ohio’s agrarian heritage.

Once controversial, Field of Corn now draws tourists from far and away to Dublin, where it occupies Sam and Eulalia Frantz Park on Frantz Road.

Like Cochran, who has expressed both pride and resentment toward the notoriety his Field has created, Mason has somewhat mixed feelings about the topiaries. His meticulously planned, trimmed and arranged bushes have brought him and the park widespread attention, with stories in books, national magazines and newspapers.

Yet, the figures were his first topiaries, an unexpected “branching out” from his career as a sculptor of carved wood, stone, cast bronze and welded steel. Several of his other works, in fact, are on display at the Hammond Harkins Galleries, 2264 E. Main St., Bexley, in a joint exhibition with paintings by Dennison Griffith.

“I have a love-hate relationship with the park,” Mason said. “I just get sick of it, sick of talking about it. I guess when you are sick of it, you’re done.”

Yet, in a way, the Topiary Garden is never really done. Keeping the yews healthy and in “Seurat shape” is an ongoing job, much of it undertaken by volunteers who love the park and its bushy sculptures.

The combination of Mason’s vision and the ardent determination of a group of local enthusiasts, many of whom now make up the support group Friends of the Topiary Park, in fact, turned what was once several acres of old bricks into the unusual green space.

The leadership and fund-raising capabilities of Kitty Morton Epler, Chuck and Nornie Loving, Jay Huey, Priscilla Hewetson, Carolyn May and a few others helped Mason and his wife, Elaine, argue the case for the park and the topiaries before former Mayor Buck Rinehart and the Columbus Recreation and Parks Department.

Mason teaches art in the Columbus Cultural Arts Center, where he also maintains his studio. Elaine Mason is a retired arts coordinator for the Recreation and Parks Department and now instructs gardeners on how to trim the topiaries. In the late 1980s, the two took their ideas to Jim Barney, then director of Recreation and Parks and the person the Masons credit with cultivating the city’s support.

With funding from the city, Motorists Insurance (whose headquarters overlooks the park), the Town Franklin Neighborhood Association the Columbus Foundation and individual and corporate sponsors, 95 yews were planted in newly distributed topsoil in November 1988, the beginning of the arts project. Mason made armatures for each of the figures in his studio. The metal structures serve as skeletons upon which the trees can grow; they also help protect the living art in bad weather.

Last Sunday, The Masons and the Friends of the Topiary Park hosted a “Tea With the Topiaries” – their own version of “Sunday in the Park With George(s).” The teas have become annual events. Folks in period dress strolled along, some stopping to purchase garden- or art-oriented gifts at Yewtopia on Town, the park’s museum store at 480 E. Town St.

The Topiary Park is somewhat hidden behind brick walls, a wrought iron fence and the many tall trees along Town Street. One has to walk well into it to take in all the figures. Once discovered, however, the park and its living artworks promise to draw admirers back again and again. They create a sanctuary from hustle and bustle of Downtown.

Mason is proud of his and the city’s achievement, but he is realistic about the role of the park and its arts project.