The Haystack Mural turns the Kohler generator box at Old Garden Beach into a glass aquarium. The box is long and low, roughly seven and a half feet wide, and its proportions let it read as a fish tank seen from the outside, filled with Cape Ann and Gulf of Maine sea life: striped bass, cod, flounder, a lobster, a harbor seal, and silversides moving through kelp and eelgrass around a half-buried lobster trap, with a cormorant diving after the fish. The ventilation louvers become rising columns of bubbles, so the box's working parts become part of the picture.

The name comes from Haystack, the rock farthest out at Old Garden, which goes under at high tide and comes back with seaweed halfway up its sides. Neighborhood kids named it, along with Giant, Baby Giant, and Bathtub, and the name has held for at least fifty years without anyone making it official. The Association proposed the mural's name.

The design was built around the town's guidelines from the start. The water is bright aqua and seafoam rather than deep teal to keep the enclosure cool, dark tones stay on the existing black base, required nameplates are framed as little aquarium info cards, and hinges, latches, and seals are left as bare metal. Rockport has very little wall space for public art, which makes a box like this a rare canvas at a spot that sees heavy foot traffic half the year. It is the 11th Awesome Foundation mural in Gloucester and Rockport.