06/10/2025
Before she was an award-winning muralist traveling the country for commissioned work, Nico Cathcart ’08 lived in an upstairs apartment on Main Street in Cortland.
She had recently graduated from the Art Studio: Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) program at SUNY Cortland, close to where she grew up in nearby Homer. Cathcart recalls working on sketches for hours at Lucky’s, the former downtown punk bar that served as an unofficial gallery and hang-out for local artists.
“It was the start of my art career right there on Main Street,” said Cathcart, who today lives in Richmond, Virginia, and travels frequently to paint at some of the nation’s largest street art and graffiti festivals.
Just a few blocks away from where her professional art career began, Cathcart’s most recent work adorns the side of the KeyBank located at 1 North Main Street. The mural, measuring approximately 15 feet high and 45 feet wide, was completed in late May.
It’s an impressive display of public art commissioned by local real estate developer David Yaman, who owns the building. The multiyear project was supported by Cortland’s Downtown Revitalization Initiative as well as other community partners, including the City of Cortland Mayor’s Office and the Cortland Historic Commission.
The artwork already has earned international attention. Street Art Cities, a blog based in Europe, listed it among the world’s top 100 murals painted in May 2025 — the only New York entry to make the list and one of 10 entries from the entire country.
Cathcart’s work shares a captivating landscape view of the city of Cortland and its surrounding hills. It features several references to local history and landmarks, including SUNY Cortland. The central subject is a woman holding out her hand with her hair flowing and an eastern bluebird, New York state’s official bird, flying forward.
“One of the core things that I hope comes across is the idea of ‘Crown City rising,’ which I love,” said Cathcart, referring to a tagline highlighting the city’s recent construction and downtown revitalization efforts. “I like that feeling — the way everything is designed in an upwards and forwards motion.”
Among the symbols in the mural: a crown above the center figure’s head signifies Cortland’s Crown City nickname because of its location on a plain formed by the convergence of seven valleys; two architectural rondels in the upper corners include a Brockway truck and a Fender guitar, references to the former motor company’s home in Cortland and famous rock musician Ronnie James Dio, who grew up in Cortland. The woman’s dragon earring with a ruby alludes to SUNY Cortland’s presence in the community.
“The input that started everything was to ‘make (the mural) very Cortland,’ and you can’t really talk about the city without mentioning SUNY Cortland,” Cathcart said. “So that was a natural thing.”
Cathcart, who was born in Toronto, spent more than 10 years of her life in the Cortland area as a teenager and in her early 20s. An abstract painter at a young age, she transferred to SUNY Cortland’s B.F.A. program from a larger cohort at SUNY Oswego. The shift helped expose her to different forms of three-dimensional art, from sculpture to ceramics. She also was able to pursue courses that spoke to her interests in art history, including one on the Sistine Chapel.
“I tapped into a lot of ambition (at SUNY Cortland),” Cathcart said. “Those classes were foundational for me to re-explore something that I was interested in during my youth. They forced me to think about things in a different way.”
Outside of a few walls painted at the former Lucky’s establishment, Cathcart’s career as a muralist took off after she left Cortland. She also completed a 2021 mural, “Bounty,” on the façade of a South Main Street warehouse for three Cortland agricultural businesses.
In total, Cathcart has painted more than 50 murals across the country, many of them featuring colorful flowers and intricate skulls. Her frequent use of birds reflects her personal experience with hearing loss, which inspired a 2018 TEDx talk. Other paintings have been shown in galleries across North America.
Cathcart often incorporates important social causes in her artwork. She paints as a member of Few and Far Women, a street art and graffiti crew that leads large-scale efforts and provides a community of support for women artists. In 2020, Cathcart was honored as an Agent of Change by the Virginia Museum of History and Culture for her activism through art.
The time management associated with her work can be complicated, especially juggling ideas for dozens of projects at one time. The recent Cortland mural, which took roughly two weeks to complete because of weather delays, relied on thousands of pencil sketches from conception to completion. The travel itinerary is busy, too. Cathcart’s plans through July include murals in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, the birthplace of modernist painter Georgia O’Keeffe, South Bend, Indiana, and nearby Ithaca.
“These projects look like they’re all done start to finish and it’s the only thing you’re thinking about,” she said. “But it’s a gig-based thing, so you’re working on about 40 projects at a given time.
“It’s a busy life. You don’t get to be home very often.”
Cathcart savored the opportunity to be back in Cortland and spend time with her parents, who still live in the area. From her forklift on North Main Street, she shared conversations with community members walking by, including family members of friends who she had not seen in 25 years. She also remarked on the area’s growing arts scene: through programs at the Cortland Youth Bureau, events at Ake Gallery on South Main Street and continued success of the Center for the Arts of Homer.
As an artist, Cathcart sees her purpose as something greater than painting eye-catching murals on walls and sides of buildings. She attempts to capture the spirit and history of communities, document their culture and spur positive conversations that reflect the importance of art.
“I’ve seen Cortland change in the years since I left and I like seeing those changes,” she said. “I hope my work inspires more of that.”