Have you ever wondered what it would be like to step inside a painting and become part of the art? You can do just that in the Topiary Park Downtown.

The French impressionist painter Georges Seurat invented the technique of pointillism: using tiny dots of color to create light. In 1887 he completed the painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Isle of La Grand Jatte, which shows people in a park on an island in the Seine River in Paris. The large painting — 7 by 10 feet — now hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago and is considered to be an important painting in art history.

The Topiary Park is the site of the only topiary garden in existence based on a work of art. Nearly 80 yew trees have been clipped and trained into three-dimensional green sculptures based on the Seurat painting. The Topiary Park includes 54 topiary people, eight boats, three dogs, a monkey, a cat and a real pond with ducks, fish and waterlilies. Visitors can literally walk into the scene and become part of the artwork and its environment. Begin your visit at the top of the small hill where you will find a bronze relief of the painting on an easel. This is the same view Seurat would have painted from. Notice that the topiary is done in exaggerated perspective to create depth. The figures in the front are 12 feet tall — much larger than the figures at the far end of the pond. Take a sketchbook and draw the scene from an angle different from that of Seurat’s painting, perhaps from the rear or looking across the pond. Look at the topiary from the viewpoint of Seurat’s painting, then walk around and look at the topiary figures from the side that is not shown in the painting. How has topiary artist James Mason "finished" the figures? What surprise pet can you find in topiary that is not in the painting?

The Topiary Park is located at E. Town Street and Washington Avenue, near the Main Library and Grant Hospital. Admission is free. The park is open from dawn to dusk daily. Selfguided tour information is available in the visitors center. The park is wheelchair accessible.

Visit www.topiarygarden.org for more information and to print out an outline of the Seurat painting so that you can try your own version of pointillism before or after visiting the Topiary Park (click on "Tours, Education and Photos," then on "Teachers/Visitors Package," then on "Outline drawing."

Sources: Information for Culture Creature was provided by Friends of the Topiary Park, in cooperation with the Columbus Arts Marketing Association, www.camaonline.org.