ATLANTIS (2019)

Based on a painstaking full-size hand-painted design that took over a year to make, Atlantis is a tribute to Miami Beach’s connection to the many bodies of water that constitute the larger Florida ecosystem. The original inspiration was a 2009 visit to the Everglades organized by Creative Time and the Everglades Foundation.

Visitors to the Miami Beach Convention Center see themselves reflected in a dark shimmering  mouth-blown glass mirror engraved with a white painting of a diagonal satellite view of Florida reaching from the Gulf of Mexico through the great watershed of the Everglades to Miami Beach and the Atlantic Ocean.  As the light changes throughout the day, the image appears to float above and then be subsumed by the reflections, literally mirroring Florida’s intimate and fraught relationship to its water table. The mirror is divided into two sections so that visitors enter the new Grand Ballroom at the intersection between the Everglades National Park and the outskirts of Miami, between the man-made and the natural landscape. The name references both the mythological city sunk beneath the sea and the threat of rising sea levels.

Atlantis, Ellen Harvey, 2019. Hand-painted design sand-blasted into mouth-blown glass, filled with ceramic melting color, laminated to float glass mirror, set in aluminum frame. 240 glass panels, each approx. 20 x 30” (51 x 76 cm), overall 10 ‘ 2 9/16” x 104’ (3.11 x 31.70 m). Photography: Robin Hill.

Commissioned by Miami Beach Art in Public Places. Glass Fabrication: Mayer of Munich. Glass Installation: Kuritzky Glass. General Contractor: Canyon Construction.