One of the most photographed spots in the Eureka Springs area is a steep staircase on North Main St. that looks like a waterfall going down a mountain. Now, not far away, there is a second staircase art project that has just been completed, painted to look like a rainbow. The stairs run from Springs St. near Basin Park down to Main Street next to the New Delhi Café.
Steve “Yip” Vorbeck, who oversaw the public art project, became intrigued with rainbow crosswalks about a year ago when he saw an article about a Key West, Fla., rainbow crosswalk on one of its streets.
“I loved that idea,” he said. “I googled rainbow crosswalks and a dozen places showed up. Seattle has eleven, and Chilliwack, B.C., has sixteen. Ames, Iowa, has a rainbow-colored crosswalk. I’ve also visited Europe and seen rainbow flags in places like Austria, Germany and the Netherlands. As open and accepting as Eureka Springs is, I thought it was a cool idea to have a rainbow crosswalk here. As it turns out, it was just not feasible to do a crosswalk. It was Sandy Martin who suggested the staircase.”
Martin, Chair of the Eureka Springs Arts Commission, also helped with grant funding to purchase the paint.
Two high school art club members, Kyla Boardman and Kennedy Cash, came up with the design for the first painted staircase, and artist Doug Myerscough combined the two student’s submissions to make the what is now known as the Boardman-Cash staircase
“We wanted to make Main Street prettier,” Vorbeck said. “While the rainbow flag originally was used to celebrate the pride of the LGBTQ community, it has since come to be known as representing being all inclusive – all races, ethnicities, and sexual orientations. The rainbow flag now illustrates pride for all humanity. Pride is for everyone worldwide.”
Vorbeck said the colors all mean something: Red is for life. Orange is for healing. Yellow is sunlight. Green is nature. Blue is harmony. Violet is spirit. The rainbow flag was originally designed by Gilbert Baker in 1978 and has gone through a number of changes as far as colors and order of colors.
The steep stairwell that has been painted is actually a city street (although not open to vehicle traffic) known as Basin Spring Ave. Vorbeck thinks it is cool that Eureka Springs has not just a rainbow crosswalk, but a whole city street that is a rainbow.
“The tourists seem to like the painted staircases,” he said. “I don’t ever go down Main Street that someone is not taking a picture of one of the staircases.”
Vorbeck said it took months to find specially formulated sidewalk paint that would wear well, and they finally found it at a Pittsburgh Paint store in Conway. The project also had to be approved by the Arts Commission, city council and the City Advertising and Promotion Commission.
Then Vorbeck asked for volunteers to help him paint it as he can’t walk up and down staircases easily because of a leg disability. Volunteers included Lorrie Davis, Shea Shewmaker, a professional painter, and his son, Dan Vorbeck.