There’s a new mural in Oneonta’s Fortin Park.
“A Flight of Color” by Karin Bremer now adorns the park’s maintenance building. The state Council on the Arts funded the project — about $11,000 — through the organization Saratoga Arts.
“I would love to just put color on this,” Bremer, 49, said she thought of the building while walking by one day.
“When you take care of your spots, it makes people care about their community more,” she said Friday, Oct. 16.
An Oneonta resident, raised in Otego, Bremer said that the work is her fifth mural in the region in as many years. A jeweler of almost 20 years with her company, Windfall Designs, she said “most people around here know me for my jewelry.”
Her other works have included a Little League field in Otego and the side of the carriage house at the Community Arts Network of Oneonta.
“I love it. I absolutely love it,” Bremer said of her foray into murals, which have taken inspiration from her jewelry with geometric designs. “I wanted to do something closer to home” this time, she said.
The Fortin Park mural is composed of four 15-foot sections and draws on the park’s history as F. & F. Airpark from 1959 to 1999. It includes animals such as rabbits, birds, a raccoon and a dog. Flora, such as dandelions and bull thistle, are depicted.
Two children, a girl with a kite and boy with binoculars, take prominent places in the work.
The kite, Bremer said, represents joy while the binoculars represent curiosity: “tenets of childhood.”
The park includes a playground and is home to the Oneonta World of Learning, an organization that offers programming for children.
Bremer said she mostly painted the mural herself, though she hired Diana Cozzens as a mentee and Gavin Becker to assist with sealing the painting. About nine children painted in the animals.
While she painted the mural, which she completed Oct. 5, “every day someone would thank me,” she said.
“People seemed so appreciative. It was really heartwarming,” she said.
The Oneonta Town Board approved the project in July.
Deputy Supervisor Trish Riddell Kent said she was delighted by the project and its level of detail.
“What a gift to the town,” she said.