Carla Clark | For The Republic Young people color the designs to add their mark during the debut of “Make Your Mark with Parks” a traveling community mural that residents are invited to help color, at The Commons in Columbus, Ind., Tuesday, October 14, 2025.
Everyone is invited to “make their mark” on a new traveling mural, and no artistic experience is needed.
Columbus Parks and Recreation debuted the new mural Tuesday at The Commons during the Chaotic Tuesday event in which the Chaos I seven-ton kinetic (moving) sculpture by Swiss artist Jean Tinguely (1925-1991) is put into motion for visitors to experience.
The mobile mural “Drawn Together,” created by local artist Abigail Flout through a partnership with the parks department, was unveiled at the “Chaos” event and will travel to parks and community centers throughout the remainder of the year. Its whereabouts can be tracked on Columbus Parks and Recreation’s Facebook page.
Flout owns the Columbus-based small business AbFlo Creative, which she founded in January. Her work includes hand lettering, graphic design and illustration. She also works for Landmark Columbus Foundation as its operations coordinator.
“I happened to know the lovely ladies at The Commons who introduced me to (Columbus Parks and Recreation marketing manager) Beth Hughes,” Flout said. “And they just knew about my side business AbFlo Creative and they brought this project up to me and I loved it so we ran with it.”
The mural depicts dozens of illustrated people enjoying parks, amenities and locations of Columbus, from the Donner Aquatic Center to Mill Race Park to the Luckey Climber in The Commons. Those passing by are invited to color it in at wherever the mural travels using provided markers.
“The vision… really the people were the main anchor to show how all these different park spaces can be used in so many different ways and throughout all different seasons,” Flout said. “It’s not just, ‘enjoy the parks in the summers,’ it’s enjoy the parks all the time.”
The project began development in February, and Flout said they began discussing it together in early May. She then completed the mural in August, she said. The inspiration to create this project came from a trip to Orlando that Commons Manager Shanda Sasse took, where she noticed paint-by-number community art projects.
Sasse later suggested that it would be cool to do something similar in Columbus. Hughes said they knew Flout was creative and great to work with, so they brought her on board to design the mural. She said they gave Flout a list of parks, facilities, amenities and activities to be a part of the mural.
“I just think it’s a reminder that we’re allowed to show up together and play and be creative,” Hughes said. “Sometimes we take things so seriously and it’s really all about connection. And also reminding us all the places, it just reminds us all the ways that parks touch our lives.”
Following a brief introduction from Hughes on Tuesday, the gathered crowd of kids and adults were invited to color the mural. Some children, including 6-year-old Easton Brown and 3-year-old Maddie Brown, picked their favorite colors to use, those colors being green and pink.
Some even chose to draw outside of the outlines, such as 8-year-old Autumn Hermann who drew three jack-o-lanterns on the mural. Her 7-year-old brother Russell, meanwhile, colored the slides at Donner Aquatic Center yellow and the water blue.
“I picked blue because water is blue and mostly I see slides that are yellow,” Russell said.
The mural, along with markers and other coloring supplies, will travel around the community and appear at multiple upcoming events, including Skate and Scare on Oct. 24 and the Donner Fall Fest on Oct. 25. As it will take some time to complete, Hughes said she anticipates for the mural to be around into next spring.
“I think it’s great,” Flout said. “…To already see people coloring on it is super cool and I just hope the community loves it and they’re able to see at least one thing… they look at a person and it’s like, ‘that’s me.”
