IF MIAMI HASN'T GOT IT, THEY HAVEN'T INVENTED IT YET.

-Vinnie DeMarco in Miami Vice, 1984.

I have always been very sensitive to beauty and to the artistic. From the moment I arrived in Miami for the very first time, I realized that I was changed forever, not just as an artist, but as a person.

While it was just a short visit, I felt more inspired and more artistically charged than anywhere I have ever been. It seemed as though on every corner of the city, there was something I wanted to interpret artistically. From laying on my back and gazing up at the glistening beauty of the Miami Tower for hours to the unique and interesting people sitting street side enjoying breakfast on Miami Beach, everything called to me to re-create it with my own touch.

The fine details that make up the fabric of the Magic City are the reasons for and behind Miami Illustrated.

Nowhere else do "southern suns and sky blue waters," to quote the University of Miami's alma mater, come together the way they do in Miami. Combined with the white beaches and the pastel facades of restored Art Deco buildings, plus the wilder South American and Caribbean themes everywhere, Miami pulses with a vibrancy that exists only in the Magic City.

No matter where you live, whether you have been a Miamian for 15 minutes or for life, for a few days or a few years, in the past or hopefully in the future, this collection of illustrations, products, stories and more from Studio Eighty can be yours to appreciate. If you enjoy seeing them even half as much as I enjoyed creating them, this will be a success for me.

Miami Illustrated is an on going project so new work will be available often.