One Elmwood Township artists’ latest artwork for ArtPrize, an international art competition and cultural festival in Grand Rapids, is inspired by her family roots: the Couturier family baseball team of Leelanau County.
Janelle Couturier Dahlberg’s oil on canvas painting, which depicts 10 people from her family that played baseball in Leelanau decades ago, was created in just 41 days, and she worked 8-10 hours daily in order to finish the final piece she currently has displayed in the window of a Grand Rapids storefront, Old World Olive Co, on Monroe.
“It’s been a labor of love,” Dahlberg said.
The history of the baseball team goes back to well over a half century ago, and Dahlberg is still researching those connections to learn more about her family members’ stories.
The Couturier baseball team consisted of Janelle’s grandfather, LeRoy, and his eight brothers, as well as their father, Ulyssis, who was the group’s coach. The brothers names were: Walt, Bill, LeRoy, Ralph, Bob, Lawrence, Bernie, Paul, and Joe. The art piece is based on a photograph featured in a 1995 article from The Grand Rapids Press that highlighted the family ties and how baseball brought the nine brothers together. The team was known as being the only baseball team to be made up of all brothers, and their photograph reportedly even made it in the “Ripley’s Believe it Or Not” museum in Missouri.
The article also noted that all nine athletic brothers played for area teams, but they finally got together to form their own team in 1952, when they took to the field for the first time on a Labor Day against the Leelanau County All-Stars with hundreds of spectators in attendance. That event raised $625 at the time for people suffering from polio, with proceeds specifically going to the infantile paralysis fund, and National Cherry Queen Ruth Belanger of Lake Leelanau throwing the baseball to start the game. The brothers continued to play through 1955 while raising money for charities.
Dahlberg said she had the Couturier baseball team photo framed in her living room for quite a while and always had the idea to do something with it in the back of her mind. Despite not typically gravitating towards portraits, Dahlberg said she was inspired to challenge herself to recreate the photo in the form of a painting. The heartwarming process of drawing and painting her family members allowed Dahlberg to retrace and reconnect with her roots.
“Literally as I was painting their faces, I got to know them as a person,” she said. “I only met one person out of that whole picture, and it was my dad’s uncle Ralph… So as I was painting them, I felt like I was meeting them, and it was just like ‘they’re becoming real, they’re getting dimension, they’re getting life, I’m looking into their eyes as I’m painting them.’”
Within the painting, Dahlberg also included a nod to her late father, DuWayne, and painted his baseball glove from 1986 in front of where her grandfather is pictured. DuWayne played on and was the coach of the Elmwood hardball team during the last year of the league.
“We had his glove still from him playing baseball when we were kids, he played for Elmwood Township also, just like my grandpa, and it was just like the cherry on top. This was the tribute to grandpa, this is the tribute to my dad, this is the tribute to the family kind of all rolled into one,” she said.
This is the eighth year Dahlberg has entered her work into ArtPrize, and said she plans to continue entering until she wins the competition. She already has another deeply personal idea planned for next year that she’s eager to start on sooner than later.
“It’s nice to do ArtPrize because it pushes me into a different way of looking at things… It’s nice to get the feedback,” she said. “My dad and I were always like, ‘what do you got this year to try and do something up and win ArtPrize?’ And I told him, I won’t stop until I win, dad, just because I get competitive.”
ArtPrize closes on Oct. 3, and the public, if located in Grand Rapids, can register to vote for their favorite art pieces until then.
