Artistic Talent Branches Out Into Topiary

For most of his life, Frank Barraza yearned to be an artist. But life being what it is, the Anaheim resident worked much of his life as a laborer in the construction business.

Today, Barraza has found his artistic niche in topiary art, sculpting shrubs and trees into a variety of ornamental animals and encasing the figures in chicken wire for easy trimming.

“Throughout the years, I’ve taken a lot of art classes,” said Barraza, 52, who creates his shrub animals in his back yard. “But I never found anything I could really do well.

“I once tried making clay sculptures, but I wasn’t good at it. Sometimes I like to oil paint--and I’m better at that, but not real good.”

But sculpting animals, he said, “makes me happy.”

Barraza, who changes the shrubs and trees into swans, deer, kangaroos, horses, hippopotamuses, giraffes, elephants, bears and most other animals, isn’t exactly a novice at it.

“In the 1970s, I made 800 of the animals and I was just learning at that time,” he said. “Most of them are still standing in places like motels and inns that use them to landscape their places.”

People driving along Katella Avenue and Harbor Boulevard can see the animals he and other topiary artists have created throughout the years at inns and motels along those thoroughfares. And some of his living artwork is displayed at Disneyland.

“Topiary is becoming more and more popular and I’d like to be part of it,” Barraza said. “I can see a future in opening a business by sculpting animals from trees and shrubs.”

And while his topiary looks like the others, it is sculpted and finished sometimes in hours and days, unlike others who make a frame of an animal and allow the trees and shrubs to grow to the form.

He said it can take as much as a year for some of the shrubs to fill out the larger frames.

“You know I dream that someday I’ll really make a success from this and my name will really be something that people can remember because of my work with these animals,” he said. “I want so bad to do something that people can remember before I die.”

Linda Adams was introduced to a screaming-pillow in a consciousness-raising group. “They said it would become my best friend,” she recalled, and has since decided it might sell.

The 34-year-old Huntington Beach entrepreneur developed her own screaming-pillow, packaged it in containers that resemble half-gallon ice cream cartons, and has given them such names as Boo-Hoo Blueberry and Choked-Up Chocolate. They sell for $10.

She said it helps discouraged dieters, angry commuters, resentful employees and the like to release anger by screaming into the pillow.

Adams said it took her nine months to fully develop and market the pillow. “When I got discouraged, I screamed into my pillow. It really works.”

She has named her product “LA I Scream Pillow.” (LA is for Linda Adams.)

Adams said some people may find it difficult to learn to scream. But “once you get started, the sense of relief is remarkable,” she added.

To be on the safe side, Adams said, she keeps pillows in her car and at work.

Ronald S. Depper, a Laguna Hills pharmacist, won a weeklong trip for two to Madrid in a pharmaceutical company’s sweepstakes promotion.

He won by correctly answering the penetrating question, “What nasal spray do most pharmacists recommend?”

The telephone call to Genevieve and Dudley Peterson of San Clemente came 21 years after their son, Navy helicopter pilot Lt. Dennis W. Peterson, was shot down and killed in Vietnam while trying to rescue a downed American pilot.

The Navy wants to fly the couple and their son’s family to Whiting Field in Milton, Fla., to help dedicate a helicopter training building in his name.

“We were very surprised to get the phone call after such a long time,” said Genevieve Peterson.

“I think this is great even though it brings up memories and a certain amount of heartaches that go with it,” Dudley Peterson added.

He said the Navy wanted to honor his son because he had won so many medals for bravery. “The Navy said they wanted to name the building after a hero,” he said.

Their son’s two daughters, Kirsten, 23, who was 2 when he was killed, and Denise, 21, who was born three weeks after his death, and their mother, Sharon, will also attend the Oct. 27 ceremony.