Sculptor Deborah Masters created the “Coney Island Reliefs” in cast concrete. The 1260 sq. ft. of relief panels fit within existing recesses in the viaduct. Tinted a terracotta color to harmonize with the sandstone color of the Ocean Parkway viaduct, a massive structure that carries the subway across six lanes of traffic and an Olmstead parkway, the reliefs portray scenes from the history and legends of Coney Island, including Neptune, a mermaid, beach, boardwalk, and amusement park scenes. The designs are based upon photographs, drawings, and interviews by the artist with local residents and visitors to the famed amusement park. On the north and south facing facades, there are six triangular shapes in which Neptune and the Mermaid repeat in paired groupings, as well as large rectangular panels at either end of the viaduct facade that feature scenes of Coney Island. 

The work is a visual gateway into Coney Island, and a major accomplishment that met many technical challenges. The figures and images are modelled with expression, reflective of the large-scale sculpture for which the artist is known and has exhibited widely. The work seems an integral part of the historic structure and indeed, the recessed areas may have been intended for artwork that was never provided to the community, until now.

Deborah Masters was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and later moved to New Mexico and Mexico where she absorbed the unique natural environment and distinctive art, before moving back to PA and later to Brooklyn. She earned a BFA from Bryn Mawr College, concentrated on sculpture and bronze casting at Haverford College, and studied at The New York Studio School. Masters' larger than life sculptures, drawings, and painted works are strongly influenced by mythic and archetypal cultures and reflect the people she has known in all their social, existential, and spiritual dimensions. While living in Brooklyn, Masters worked as a fine artist and on public commissions, including painted reliefs at John F. Kennedy Airport Terminal Four, Immigration Hall, the Whitney Museum at Phillip Morris, New York and Audubon Park, New Orleans. Masters has had solo exhibitions at Storm King Art Center and Smack Mellon Gallery, among others. In 2020, Sweet Soul in Exile, a documentary about Deborah Master's activism on behalf of NYC renters' rights, won an audience award at the Berlin Short Films Festival.