Marty LaMarche’s Spring Has Been Consumed By A Whale Of A Project

By Nancy K. Crevier

The Bible’s Jonah spent three days in the belly of a whale. Marty LaMarche won’t be in the belly, but she will be swallowed up for far more than three days with a whale of a project: painting a five-foot-tall, foam core, fiber-glass reinforced polyester resin beluga whale form.

Ms LaMarche, the owner of Tweak Design and Communications, LLC and a member of Connecticut Art Director’s Club, has been chosen by K&M Productions of New London to take part in the unique Whale Trail presented by Mystic Coast & Country Travel Industry Association, a nonprofit association that promotes tourism in southeastern Connecticut and coastal Rhode Island.

Modeled after the hugely popular Cows on Parade, this art event will feature Connecticut’s state animal, the sperm whale, as well as the beluga whale. Fifty to 75 selected artists will design and paint either a beluga or sperm whale sculpture that will be on public display from July to October in cities from Old Lyme to Westerly, R.I.

A local business, nonprofit agency, or an individual sponsors each whale sculpture. At the end of the display period, the decorated whales will be publicly auctioned off, with 100 percent of the money going to local charities.

Ms LaMarche received notice of the call for artists in March. Her initial reaction was to toss it aside with her other junk mail.

“I didn’t think I had time for that,” she says, but looking over the literature in a quiet moment, she became intrigued with the idea, and liked that it was a charitable event.

As a diversion from her busy graphic design and desk-top publishing business, Ms LaMarche has ventured into fine arts. A student of artist Alex Shundi of Amenia, N.Y. and a member of The Society of Creative Arts in Newtown (SCAN), her focus is watercolor painting.

“I’ve also done some acrylics and oils,” she says.

But a painting project such as The Whale Trail seemed like foreign territory to her. She pondered the suggested themes supplied with the application, and as she did, her own theme began to take shape. The Whale Trail project is billed as a public art display, subject to interaction from the viewers. With that in mind, she started thinking about what she could do that would have the broadest appeal and be hands-on.

“Whale Centered” (well centered) became her theme. She envisioned the whale carrying the message of a spiritual, centering journey.

Says Ms LaMarche, “The picture on the whale is symbolic of everyone’s spiritual journey.”

On her submission, Ms LaMarche describes her vision of life’s journey depicted by paintings of “rugged terrain to bucolic vistas, meandering rivers and subterranean waterways.”

 Grassy meadows blooming with flowers flow across one side of the beluga in Ms LaMarche’s design.

“Sometimes life is easy,” she says of the meadow, while the desert depicted on the opposite side represents the “dry times in our lives.” The mountains represent life’s struggles and challenges, while the elaborate sun that will highlight the whale’s back is “the divine light everyone has inside.” A compass rose and fleur-de-lis symbolize the directions life can take.

Placed in easily accessible spots on the whale are four interactive, simple finger labyrinths.

A labyrinth is an unobstructed path that winds from the outside to a central place, and has been used for centuries by cultures worldwide as a tool for assisting mental focus and meditation. The labyrinth — a metaphor for the journey one makes in life — is usually walked as a way to release tension and receive spiritual nourishment.

A finger labyrinth is a drawn version of the path labyrinth, and users trace the path with a “walking” finger instead of their feet. Ms LaMarche will also include a “seed pattern” on her whale, for those interested in creating their own finger labyrinth.

Her vision was well received, and on April 15 she was notified that her design would be gracing the form of one of the Whales on Parade. Thirty-six merchants at Old Mystic Village pooled their resources to sponsor the $6,000 whale Ms LaMarche will paint.

Bonnie Rogers, owner of Stonebridge Herbary in Old Mystic Village and one of the sponsors, says the merchants liked that Ms LaMarche used the four elements of earth, sky, wind and sea in her design.

“[The design] had a mystical, magical feel,” she says, as to why they chose Ms LaMarche to paint their whale. “We also wanted to pick one that would auction well,” she adds, noting that the next big step is for the 36 merchants to decide which local charity will benefit from the sale of the whale in November.

In a wake of whale jokes (“Why did the whale cross the road? To get to the other tide.”) Ms LaMarche set off to New London on April 30 to retrieve her beluga model from a warehouse. Driving back, with the whale balanced on the back of a trailer, people passing by waved enthusiastically and pointed, causing her husband to quip, “Leave them alone, and they’ll come home, dragging their whales behind them.”

Although guidelines require the project to be completed by June 25, Ms LaMarche aims to apply the finishing touches to her whale by Memorial Day. It will be nice to reclaim her dining room, which is presently dominated by the great, white whale.

And accolades of a job “whale” done won’t hurt, either.