On Saturday, students from New Paltz High School completed a mural on the backside of the handball court at Majestic Park in Gardiner.

The mural features a crowd of people holding up signs in support of the Black Lives Matter movement. Popular cartoon characters such as Patrick Star from SpongeBob SquarePants and Finn from Adventure Time appear in the piece to keep it light. The project’s proposal was approved at last Tuesday’s Gardiner Town Board meeting.

Artist and Gardiner resident Sandra Fabara, known professionally as Lady Pink, approached New Paltz art teacher Todd Martin after he expressed interest in creating a mural with his students. Martin held virtual meetings with his students at the beginning of the summer in order to create a plan for the mural. This was during the height of the Black Lives Matter rallies, which greatly influenced the students.

“Everybody was talking about the Black Lives Matter movement at that point in time…,” said rising sophomore Sofia Loyer. “That was like the first thing that we came up with and we all liked it.”

Students drafted ideas for the mural and Fabara created the rendering. The murals’ illustrations were outlined four weeks ago and colored in on Saturday.

This project was funded through the Martin Wong Foundation. Wong was a Chinese-American painter in the late twentieth century whose work has been described as a meticulous blend of social realism and visionary art styles.

Since 2002, the Martin Wong Foundation has supported an art education program for high school art students, coordinated by Fabara. She worked with students at the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts in Queens, New York for 12 years, completing murals and public painting projects. In 2014, Fabara moved to upstate New York, where she has collaborated with regional artist collectives and high school students.

This mural will be replaced each year with a different one. This year’s design replaced an abstract piece, which was also rendered by Lady Pink. The mural on the frontside of the handball court will stay as is.

Though the town board approved the proposal for the project, members felt that some of the murals’ illustrations were inappropriate. (see related story). Fabara, Martin and the students are standing by their artwork.

“The community felt some of the statements were a bit controversial and they’ve asked us to not go with it,” Fabara said. “The hands up, don’t shoot and I can’t breathe, but the students are standing strong and they feel that these things have to be said.”