Pictured: Nancy Goodheart Matthews' Mermaid Fountain sits in the heart of Downtown Sarasota. Photo by Phil Lederer.

Thirty years ago, the City of Sarasota asked Nancy Goodheart Matthews to design public art for a park in the heart of Downtown Sarasota. It was the sculptor’s first public art project, and she would devote a year of her life to its creation, hand-carving and installing each element herself, working herself sick in the Sarasota sun. The result—an elaborate twin-facing fountain adorned in mosaic and bas-relief friezes—would be none other than downtown’s iconic “Mermaid Fountain.” Tonight, the City of Sarasota celebrates Matthews and Mermaid Fountain, which has recently been inducted into the Smithsonian Institute’s national collection of public art sculptures, with a public event at the site. “It’s really like a dream,” says Matthews, who will be in attendance, alongside city officials and local arts leaders.

Though originally named L’Aria della Figlia Muta, the Italian was a bold choice and Matthews’ creation quickly became known for its prominent mermaid scene—a large-scale bas-relief sculpture of a mermaid rising from the water, arms spread and hair splayed out against the blue sky, flanked by frolicking dolphins and flowers in bloom. But that doesn’t mean short shrift should be given to the equally intricate scene on its opposite side, where the Tree of Life sends its seeking branches and sprawling roots in all directions, surrounded by woodland creatures like a rabbit, a boar, a bluejay and a suspiciously happy snail. Or the 30 smaller bas-relief friezes ringing the base of the fountain, the mosaic sculptures within the fountain’s basin, or the whole series of quasi-inspirational mosaic scenes laid out in the cement of the sidewalks surrounding. Matthews hand-carved every piece, triple-firing the clay and then installing it all by hand.

“It speaks to everyone in its own way,” Matthews says of the fountain’s lasting impact on the community, holding its ground and even being restored in 2017, despite development changing the skyline all around it. “It takes them away from the rational world, hopefully for just a moment, and encourages them to enter their imagination.” And careful observers will find some Jungian psychology at play in the artist’s design, with the fountain containing a male side and a female side, a conscious side and an unconscious side, an earthy side and an aquatic side. Combining them, she says, the fountain represents something whole.

Today, living in Bradenton, Matthews doesn’t see Mermaid Fountain that much. But people in town still call to tell her stories. She hears about weddings in the park and lovers’ trysts at the water’s edge, yogis meditating with the mermaid and even the time a naked woman climbed on top of the whole thing for purposes unknown. Matthews laughs at the thought. “Art is for everyone,” she says. “We need uplifting. We need to celebrate what’s beautiful and what’s around us here in Sarasota.”

The celebration for Mermaid Fountain is tonight at 7:30pm at Paul N. Thorpe Jr. Park, located at the intersection of Lemon and Pineapple Avenues.

Pictured: Nancy Goodheart Matthews' Mermaid Fountain sits in the heart of Downtown Sarasota. Photo by Phil Lederer.