92. DOYLE PARTNERS
Who could resist making a title plaque for something called The Fountain of Life? Not Stephen Doyle. “For me,” he says, “the metaphor of a book is a far-reaching one. A book, you know, is also a fountain.” As an occasional book designer, Doyle found it gratifying to create the sculpture. “I had to learn how to work with clay, and see it all the way through plaster casts to carve the type, wax casts, bronze casting, and patina.”

The Fountain of Life, as he describes it, is a bronze riot of ocean-going horses, a mermaid and merman, and crustaceans rising above fountains gushing water into a double basin at the New York Botanical Garden.

When the 100th anniversary renovation called for a plaque, Doyle proposed a bronze book, perched on the edge of the basin as if left there by someone. Carved into the front cover is The Lillian Goldman Fountain of Life.

“I could have simply cast a book, but that process seemed to rob the idea of poetry,” Doyle says. “In fact, this book was modeled on an anthology of poetry I inherited from my mother, so the Fountain of Life idea is intrinsic in many ways.”
Dana Rouse