Art bubbles up from every part of M-C Lamarre’s life. Her Oak Bluffs home is a canvas for her found creations.
A discarded mailbox is now a hamper. A grandfather clock is now a wine rack. Pull-down maps from an old school are window shades. Scrapped shingles become portraits of gingerbread cottages.
“Rather than go buy something, make it, is kind of how my brain works,” Ms. Lamarre said.
Just inside her front door is an artistic creation from her childhood. It has been re-purposed more than once.
“This here hangs as artwork on the wall, but growing up that was the base of a go-cart that my parents made,” she said. “There are certain things that really remind me of my childhood. In one of my apartments I made it into a coffee table. Here there wasn’t space for that, but I wanted to be able to still enjoy it.”
However, while visitors chuckle at her whimsical home decor, her other claim to fame adorns hundreds of walls, barns, basements, bars, and even one bathroom in 23 states and Canada.
Ms. Lamarre has become quite well known for painting meticulously accurate murals of Fenway Park’s famous Green Monster outfield wall. She talked with the Gazette just before leaving on a road trip to Gray, Me., to paint her 195th Green Monster mural.
“It’s amazing to me the number of people who have this love for this park,” Ms. Lamarre said. “Even now that’s been what’s so fascinating to me, why people do it, how they came about it, whether it’s a fascination for the team, the park, memories created with family. It’s kind of taken on a life of its own.”
The whole thing started by happenstance. Ms. Lamarre was taking a bit of a time out from her career in art administration, to see if she could support herself making her own art.
“I also was struggling with being in art administration and creating opportunities for artists that I really wanted to be affording myself,” Ms. Lamarre said.
Her nine brothers and sisters were having children, and several asked her to paint themed nurseries. She painted her first Green Monster mural for her nephew.
“I found that I was happiest when I was making something, and the mural work just kind of naturally started finding its own way.”
One mural led to another, and each one became customized. The Green Monster has changed over the years, with different promotions and advertising, so Ms. Lamarre keeps a thick resource book of pictures and other materials to help her paint a historically accurate mural.
Many people want to add their own touches. She is happy to brush a piece of personal history onto the wall, or the iconic scoreboard.
“If you want certain items, whether it’s the Jimmy Fund logo, a pair of red sox, commercial marketing, any of that stuff,” she said. “The Citgo sign, for some people that’s important to incorporate. They pick the game. Some people stop at a certain moment in time. They want to pick who’s at bat, they pick down to the pitch count.”
A very personal mural was what Richard Weiss of Oak Bluffs wanted when he hired Ms. Lamarre to paint the Green Monster on his boat house.
“Within the numbers, the scores, is my daughter’s birthday, my birthday, the World Series win,” Mr. Weiss said. “I picked Detroit at Boston because that was my daughter and my first Red Sox game together. My daughter thinks it’s cool, so that’s all I care about.”
Mr. Weiss has since added a replica of the Citgo sign, and the Pesky Pole, which his friends sign just like the real one at Fenway Park.
“I get a few people that say, are you out of your mind?” Mr. Weiss said. “I say, we live on the Vineyard so we’re all a little out of our mind.”
Ms. Lamarre’s 100th mural was the largest, and among the most notable she has painted. It’s on the back of former Red Sox second-baseman Jerry Remy’s Sports Bar and Grill in Fall River. It’s 30 feet high and 70 feet long. The scoreboard alone is eight feet high and 40 feet long.
She also painted a mural that depicts one of the most infamous moments in Red Sox history.
“I did the unthinkable to most,” she said. “I painted for Mr. Bucky [bleepin’] Dent.”
It was the New York Yankee shortstop’s three-run homer over the Green Monster that pierced the heart of Red Sox Nation in 1978, dooming the home team’s post season hopes.
“I painted one for him at his baseball school in Del Ray, Fla.” Ms. Lamarre said. “Very nice man actually. To some people, they’re like, why on earth would you ever do that? It was really, really neat to be able to sit down with somebody and have these shared stories. Yankee or not, he shares experiences at Fenway Park.”
Although she has painted Green Monster murals in just about every imaginable place, Ms. Lamarre said it is her connection with her clients that has become the most memorable part of her work.
“The emotion behind it really became what was interesting,” she said. “It wasn’t really where I was doing it, it was why they were asking me to do it.”
She remembers one client who, with tears in his eyes, thanked her for a mural which gave him a place to talk to his late father, an avid Red Sox fan.
“It’s much more than a wall,” she said. “It’s creating an environment for people which I take very seriously. I always thank my clients for trusting me with the space.”
Mural number 200 is well within sight, and Ms. Lamarre is working to make it a special one. But she has no intention of stopping when that one is done. “On to the next,” she said. “I’m going to hit 300.”
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