A well-known Miami graffiti artist is facing criminal charges after allegedly sneaking into the shuttered Miami Seaquarium and spray-painting an announcer’s booth.
According to a Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office arrest complaint, a security guard noticed Adam Vargas (AKA Atomik), the 45-year-old artist most known for the smiling oranges seen tagged throughout South Florida, arriving at the park on a bike on Monday. The guard alerted police, who saw Vargas “actively spray-painting the announcer’s booth inside the Golden Dome” of the park, which will close in October 2025 following years of decline and outrage from animal rights groups.
Police said Vargas eventually admitted to entering and vandalizing the park.
Local 10 reports that a court set him bond at $3,000 and ordered him to keep away from the park.
Vargas, who rose to popularity in Miami’s growing graffiti culture in the 1990s, is most known for the grinning orange figure he first painted in 2008 as a tribute to the now-demolished Orange Bowl. The original wore a crown, which was near enough to Obie, the stadium’s 1989 mascot, that the Orange Bowl Committee sent him a cease-and-desist order. Vargas replaced the crown with a stem, adding a teardrop and a chipped tooth. Today, the figure can be found as far afield as Korea and Thailand.
His interactions with law enforcement, like those of other graffiti artists, date back decades.
In 2003, he joined Miami Style Gods (MSG), a team started in 1992 by painters Crook and Crome and which has grown to become South Florida’s most notable graffiti group. Two years later, Vargas and a few friends formed a second group called 28, named after Miami-Dade’s police dispatch code for vandalism.
Vargas has stated that he was first charged with criminal mischief at the age of 15 and estimated in a 2021 interview that he had been detained 15 times in Miami-Dade, with his longest stint in jail being a week at Metro West Detention Center.
In 2010, he and a friend founded a design firm that marketed hand-painted murals, original art, and graphic design. Two years later, he was commissioned to create the “Welcome to Little Havana” mural on Calle Ocho.
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