Our beautiful, beautiful home, Eureka Springs, Arkansas, is brimming with joy.
While the beauty of nature surrounds you at every corner in our town, when you sprinkle-in the many unique, different and innovative creations by the residents, locals and visitors - aesthetics of joy can be found everywhere in Eureka Springs.
Go On A Joy-Spotting Adventure
An emerging body of research shows that there is a clear link between our surroundings and our mental health. Yet nearly all the advice on how to find happiness ignores this fact.
Eureka Springs is the kind of place where you can practice joy-spotting.
Joy-spotting is the practice of going out into the world and finding ordinary "things" that make you extraordinarily happy, like a set of stairs painted like a rainbow or stumbling upon our Annual Antique Car Show and Parade.
In Eureka Springs, Arkansas, our greatest source of joy is our town. I encourage you, as you journey in and around Eureka Springs, to shift your perspective and take a joy-spotting adventure.
Get out there and seek out the wonders that make our homes, our connections and our lives so very joyful.
Search for all things joyful for it may bring you a new source of energy, abundance, freedom, harmony, play, surprise, transcendence, magic, celebration and renewal.
Joy is high-energy happiness, and the energy aesthetic is the visual manifestation of this energy in our lives: bright color and warm, sunny light. As the German painter Johannes Itten once said, “Color is life; for a world without colors appears to us as dead.”
Pops of color and light can be like caffeine for the eyes. Turn to this aesthetic when you want to revitalize dull spaces and energize the people in them.
Chrochet artist, Gina Rose Gallina, lived in Eureka at one time. She left behind a legacy of joy all around town with her exceptional work with yarn and color. Her final product is always infused with her energy and emotion.
The trees at Music Park on Main street are covered with Gina's knitting and crotchet all over this little park.
The practice of yarnbombing is believed to have originated in the U.S. with Texas knitters trying to find a creative way to use leftover and unfinished knitting projects, but it has since spread worldwide. Houston artist Bill Davenport was creating and exhibiting crochet-covered objects in Houston in the 1990s, and the Houston Press stated that “Bill Davenport could be called the grand old man of Houston crocheted sculpture.”
Music park is a joyful sight.
Just head down Main Street and you can't miss it on the left right before you get to the Eureka Springs train station.
You know that “kid in a candy store” feeling? Well, it stems from the joy we find in quantity and variety. When people think of abundance, often times the first thing that comes to mind relates to wealth and prosperity but I challenge this thinking. Abundance doesn’t have to mean material abundance and/or the accumulation of stuff.
"When I discovered the power of sensorial abundance, my whole world changed." /John-Michael Scurio
Sensorial abundance can be achieved through repeating patterns like polka dots and stripes, the layering of textures, and the use of multicolor palettes. Using these aesthetics can help create a space that reveals the truth of Mae West’s famous maxim: “Too much of a good thing is wonderful.”
We can never experience too much art. In this artist-town, Eureka Springs has art in abundance. This is a true aesthetic of joy and brings about a tremendous surge of creativity, tourism, revenue, and, of course, joy to our town.
A Kite Festival is an exceptional example of sensorial abundance. Each year, in Eureka Springs, usually in March, the annual Kite Festival at Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge happens in Eureka Springs, AR.
“Making and flying kites is a ‘green’ sport’ families can share. It’s wind-fueled and gets kids away from sedentary activities like TV viewing and video games,” said Steve Rogers, KaleidoKites co-owner. “It’s a great photo-opportunity with world-class kites worth over a thousand dollars flown during the event. These kites are works of art, which is only fitting for an artist’s community like Eureka Springs,” added Rogers.
The event is one of the refuge’s most popular events each year. Admission is free for kite flying; regular admission prices apply to tour refuge wildlife on display. Proceeds finance rescue and ongoing care for over 135 tigers, lions, cougars and other wildlife that make the sanctuary a life-long home.
"Instead of chasing after happiness, what we should be doing is embracing joy and finding ways to put ourselves in the path of it more often. Deep within us, we all have this impulse to seek out joy in our surroundings and we have it for a reason. Joy isn't some superfluous extra, it's directly connected to our fundamental instinct for survival. On the most basic level, the drive toward joy, is the drive toward life." /Ingrid Fetell Lee
Seeing colorful kites in the Eureka skies is sensorial abundance and it brings out the joyful kid in all of us. Get out there and go spot you some joy.❤️
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