Cabot Lyford (May 22, 1925 – January 21, 2016)[1] was an American sculptor best known for his depictions of animals and the female figure, often using black granite and wood as materials.
Some of Lyford's best known pieces includes "My Mother the Wind," which was placed on the waterfront in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in 1975, and "Life Force," a seven-ton dolphin sculpture created from Deer Isle granite, which stands outside the Regency Hotel in Portland, Maine.
[3] He enrolled in Cornell University for architecture after high school, but left early to enlist in the United States military during World War II.
[3][4] Lyford relocated to New York City after graduating from Cornell, where he wrote, directed and produced television commercials for NBC and J. Walter Thompson, an advertising agency.
They relocated to Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1957, where Lyford was hired to create educational television programming at WGBH-TV, Boston's PBS affiliate.
[4] "The Whale", which now stands in Prescott Park, was carved from a massive block of black granite from Australia, which had originally been imported during the construction of a large Portsmouth high rise.
[2] The sculpture, which was created from seven tons of black granite from Deer Isle, Maine, shows three dolphins leaping from the water.
[2] He originally called the sculpture "Thanks, Exxon", but changed the name to encourage people to remember the costs of environmental, manmade calamities.
[5] Cabot Lyford died from complications of a heart attack, as well as other illnesses, at Bodwell Hospice of the Midcoast Senior Health Center in Brunswick, Maine, on January 21, 2016, at the age of 90.