Fleur-de-lis intersection blooms again as Lafayette prepares artist tribute at 10th and Main

City will honor artist Linda Vanderkolk, a community force who helped design the initial installation on Upper Main streets

With post-shutdown Mosey Down Main Street season closing in – June 12, hello – and this weekend’s return of “Fresh Air Eats” and its street seating in downtown, the huge, yellow fleur-de-lis patterns at 10th and Main streets, painted and faded beyond recognition twice already since 2015, are back.

This time, the design is heavier duty and less intricate than the hand-painted community projects that produced them the times before.

Crews apply traffic markings in the shape of fleur-de-lis in the intersection of 10th and Main streets in downtown Lafayette on Tuesday, May 12, 2021. (Photo: Dave Bangert)

“But this fleur-de-lis, it’s a flower that keeps blooming,” said Petronio Bendito, an associate professor in the Department of Art and Design at Purdue who helped design the first version as one of downtown Lafayette’s first forays into street art actually done on the actual asphalt.

“And the timing,” Bendito said, “that’s something, too.”

The work, done over three days this week by Globe Asphalt Paving Co., started a week after the death of Linda Vanderkolk, a Purdue art professor and community artist who worked with Bendito to design and install the first project at 10th and Main.

The city plans to install a plaque at the intersection to honor Vanderkolk, who did numerous public art projects in Lafayette, including “Farm Family Objects,” that has served as an entrance to the Lafayette Farmers Market at Fifth and Main streets since 1991. She died May 4. She was 69.

“Linda was such a community hero,” Bendito said. “Where these fleur-de-lis keep blooming in new and different ways is a perfect place to honor her and all she’s done.”

Fleur-de-lis markings in the intersection of 10th and Main streets received a makeover this week. The street art was part of a community installation first painted in Upper Main Street in 2015. (Photo: Dave Bangert)

This week’s work was part of sidewalk improvements done on Main Street, between 10th and 11th streets, in the past year, Margy Deverall, a planner with the city’s economic development department, said.

Originally expected to be done last fall, the design includes four, yellow fleur-de-lis – one emanating from each corner, each a nod to Lafayette’s French namesake, the Marquis de Lafayette. These versions were applied with heat the way more traditional traffic markings are. This version of crosswalks is heat-adhered, too, designed to resemble bricks, similar to other parts of downtown.

“The painted design was too intricate for the process and material they use,” Deverall said.

Bendito said the city gave him a heads up about that.

For him, the important part is that the previous two painted versions struck enough of a chord that, as they faded from years of tire wear, the city started fielding queries.

“Margy says that when the fleur-de-lis disappeared, people asked about it: Where did they go?” Bendito said.

The initial Upper Main Street installation was funded by a Place Based Investment Grant, a program of the Indiana Office of Community and Rural Affairs and the Indiana Department of Tourism to promote projects that juiced economic development and quality of life.

Artists Linda Vanderkolk, left, and Petronio Bendito, Purdue art professors, use stencils to fine tune fleur-de-lis patterns in a Main Street crosswalk designed in 2015 as a community art installation. That pattern has faded twice since then. This week it was replaced by a faux-brick pattern, similar to crosswalks in other parts of downtown Lafayette. (Photo: Courtesy Petronio Bendito)

Vanderkolk and Bendito intentionally designed crosswalks in bright yellow, orange and white to replicate the colors of traffic signals and signs to calm traffic at the four-way stop, surrounded by new restaurants and shops.

“It was an example of art and function coming together,” Bendito said. “The colors were not random.”

The installation came with a community component. More than 75 volunteers, many of them kids, came on a Saturday of a Mosey Down Main Street festival to paint yellow fleur-de-lis designs against the orange background of four crosswalks.

To make that work, the artists created laser-cut stencils that allowed templates so dozens of people could get a brush, get on the ground and paint one of the fleur-de-lis.

Artist Linda Vanderkolk, right, works with some of the 75 volunteers who, during a Mosey Down Main Street festival in 2015, helped paint crosswalks at 10th and Main streets in one day. (Photo: Courtesy Petronio Bendito)

Bendito said he and Vanderkolk simplified the shape of the floral image – “Simpler and modernized in our own way,” he said – so they could be done in a single day.

“It was a complete strategic effort,” he said.

After the first version of the 10th and Main street intersection art faded, artists Linda Vanderkolk and Petronio Bendito designed and painted this version to replace it in 2018. (Photo: Courtesy Petronio Bendito)

Bendito and Vanderkolk repainted the crosswalks in 2018, this time scaling back the design given that the community help wouldn’t be there. The 2021 version takes on a different feel.

Bendito said he was fine with that. The fleur-de-lis design – one he and Vanderkolk simplified for their own purposes and had hoped would resonate – persists in the latest version.

“It means, I feel, we found something that reflected the values of the community – something that really connected,” Bendito said. “Linda and I couldn’t have asked for anything better.”

With the 2021 refresh of 10th and Main streets, faded crosswalks once painted with fleur-de-lis patterns are replaced by faux-brick applications. (Photo: Dave Bangert)

And when this one fades someday?

“One day, maybe we can redo it in all its original glory,” Bendito said. “For now, I’m extremely proud. I’m missing Linda to share in this.”