By Dawn De Busk

Staff Writer

In a matter of a few weeks, a wildlife mural came to life in vibrant colors. 

On the last day of May, the artists and volunteers signed the mural that will be part of downtown Bridgton in the days to come.

The mural project is the brainchild of the Town of Bridgton Arts and Culture Subcommittee. The grant funding was secured through Opportunity Alliance and Maine Youth Action Network. Kate Erwin, of Harrison, was the artist whose image was chosen by the subcommittee to adorn the wall. 

The mural process encompassed many community members, including a half-dozen art students. Two sophomores from Lake Region High School (LRHS) were present on Tuesday when people put their signatures in the green grass located in the lower right-hand side of the scenic image. 

Sophomore Kalee Charette, of Casco, said she was pretty proud to be part of the project and planned to bring her friends by to see it.

“I thought it was a lot of fun, really great. Every part of it was fun. I enjoyed all of it,” she said. “I did a lot of line work, cleanup work, refining details. I worked on the stars, the flowers, the loons.”

“I feel like I’ve learned a lot,” Charette said.  

The experience will come in handy since she will be doing a mural inside the Crooked River Elementary School, too.

Rianna Reynolds, also a sophomore, was a bit more meditative about her part in it.   

“Personally, I found it really relaxing to be able to paint. It was a calming process,” she said. “It was good to make a mark on the community.”

“Overall, it was fun. I enjoyed working with Kate and the other volunteers,” Reynolds said.  

This past weekend, Reynold’s mom Carrie spent some time painting the mural. The next day, Carrie brought along her other daughter and that daughter’s boyfriend. They joined the long list of volunteers, helping with the final push to complete the mural.

“We had four to five [students] who came multiple times to help. Their parents brought them. That was all on their own without any help from me — they worked around their sports schedules and work schedules,” according to LRHS art teacher Ian Carlson.“I am so happy for them to get to work with a professional artist outside of the school and to see what that life is like. For a two of my students, [they saw] the on-the-fly problem solving that Kate and her team had to do. For example, the initial projector wasn’t working. They ended up with Deertrees Theatre giving them a projector to shine the image on the wall. My students were impressed that within a matter of a couple hours, Kate was able to come up with a solution,” he said. “As a school teacher that is what you want to see your students do: active problem solving skills.”

“For a 15-or 16-year-old kid who’s interested in the art to see it is not just, ‘I sit at a table and it’s done.’ But, it is really a team effort and a community effort is a good outcome,” he said.  

“I live in Bridgton. I think it is really special that we have someone like Kate who is making an effort to feature art work in the downtown area,” Carlson said.

Artist Kate Erwin recalled the challenges with the projector, the wrong caulking and the colorless minnows.   

“The projector. The first night I tried the projector it was a total failure,” she said, adding it only shone on a small section of the wall. 

“We gave that up, and we got one from Deertrees Theatre. I live in Harrison so I made a few phone calls, and Deertrees was generous enough to let us borrow theirs. It was a projector that we would have had to rent for hundreds of dollars a day,” she said.

“This would have been totally overwhelming to do myself or even with a small team,” Erwin said.  

“We put the wrong kind of caulking on all the boards. We couldn’t sand it down. Paul Whiting helped me peel it off inch by inch,” she said. 

“Fun times. Fun times,” Whiting said sarcastically. 

People have looked at the mural and asked about the red fish being eaten by the red-eyed loon. 

“The fish were meant to be minnows, lake fish of Maine. They were supposed to be the traditional brown-green color that almost all minnows are,” Erwin said.   “They just disappeared. And they looked really, really boring. You couldn’t see them from far away,” she said. “We agonized over it for anoth