(This article was pulled from the New Miami Times)

David Beckham is smitten with the idea of constructing a new Major League Soccer Stadium at PortMiami and calls the site perfect because it reflects a city that “is all about the water, all about the culture.” Becks is right. For evidence, simply visit the planet’s most popular port to discover Coral Reef City, Bhakti Baxter’s first large-scale public artwork in Miami.

For his eye-popping project, part of Miami-Dade County’s Art in Public Places program, the homegrown artist created site-specific designs for the port’s toll collection booths that reference the site’s unique role as gateway to the tropics. Baxter collaborated with Coral Morphologic, a Miami-based scientific art endeavor led by marine biologist Colin Foord and musician Jared McKay to create the 18 unique designs that wrap each individual toll booth.

Each delivers a stunning vision of our vibrant local sea life. To accomplish the feat, Baxter and his collaborators enlarged macro photographs of corals that inhabit the waters in and around Miami, creating a striking synergy between nature and art that captures our town’s appeal as a pulsating paradise. The resulting explosion of the brilliant, rainbow-hued colors of the soft corals (technically known as zoanthids) delights not only the likes of Beckham and the millions of other visitors passing through on cruise ships, but also locals, who rarely get a chance to behold the mystery and beauty of the creatures populating our coastline.

Check out the video on the installation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2cWivEuS2I