July 22, 2024

By Melissa Verge

Canadian Baseball Network

Popcorn flew around Josée Tellier at Olympic Stadium like a snow shower in May.

It was launched back and forth by her restless fourth grade classmates who weren’t paying attention to the Montreal Expos on the field below.

But Tellier was. She had a deep passion for the game even then, a passion that is still evident 38 years later in the way she talks about the game and in her career choice. Baseball is her love, and art is her outlet. She’s been creating baseball art pieces out of her home in Montreal since 2019.

In fact, it’s creating that art that saved her three years ago — specifically, a Yogi Berra baseball card.

The supportive messages she received after posting the card she created on Twitter, with people interested in purchasing her work, saved her from depression, Tellier said, who is usually known for her infectious, bubbly personality.

“I think it took me in another direction,” Tellier said, who lost her parents in 2020 and 2021, and hadn’t created anything since. “I was literally just dead inside. And so that card just lit up a switch, it became light again.”

She always knew she was going to be an artist from an early age, she said. She draws every day on her computer - the same as drawing on paper, it’s just on a screen - even when she has no specific piece she’s working on for someone. Once she’s created the drawing, she can either print or cut material with a vinyl cutter, or print on hard objects, like mugs.

Her work focuses heavily on baseball history, including her forever favourite team, the Expos, and some of the all-time greats and trailblazers.

In five years of creating baseball art, the Canadian has already made it big. She was commissioned to do multiple pieces for a VP in the front office of the Cleveland Guardians organization, Alex Eckelman. One of them is a portrait she created of Larry Doby hugging Steve Gromek after Game 4 of the 1948 World Series. It’s a famous picture, during a time when Jackie Robinson had just broken Major League Baseball’s colour barrier a year earlier.

Her work also permanently hangs in the home of the Pittsburgh Pirates, PNC Park. She was commissioned to create pennants representing 10 Pittsburgh legends.

Besides personalized pennants, she also creates private commissions, portraits, baseball cards and stickers.

She has plenty of inspiration to draw from. She was a regular at Expos games for the last four years of their existence. The season's tickets were a perk given to her through work, and whenever she didn’t have someone to go with, she invited a fellow baseball loving stranger to enjoy the game with her.

Perhaps her favourite game ever, she attended with a boy she saw counting out a handful of change outside Olympic Stadium one summer day in the early 2000’s. It wasn’t enough to cover the ticket, and Tellier came in, making the save.

“I said ‘Kid, you’re coming with me, here’s your ticket,’” she said.

The two watched the game together and “ate like pigs,” in their serviced seats, she recalls. At the end of the game, Gary Sheffield walked by, and the boy had a ball he was hopeful to get signed.

“When he saw Gary Sheffield he screamed ‘GARY!’ and Gary saw him and he signed his ball, and the kid was just crying from happiness,” she said. “So that was one of the best games of my life.”

One of the worst days for her - likely, when the Expos left.

But although they’re gone, her team will always be a huge part of her and the work she does.

Her art is not just nice to look at - it’s also helped people in need, specifically to raise money for the Montreal Children’s Hospital at Expos Fest. It’s a yearly event put on by her dear friend, Perry Giannias, in memory of his niece, Kat Demes.

She created a piece for the 2024 Expos Fest of Pedro Martinez, made with hundreds of velvet pieces assembled and heat pressed on canvas. During a live auction, the piece later helped bring in $3,500 for the foundation.

That fundraising support, the friendships, the beautiful art pieces, they’ve all been created in part because of that first game experience as a fourth grader years ago.

In fact, she still carries her ticket around in her wallet to this day, signed a couple of years ago by former Expos outfielder (and Tellier’s favourite player) Andre Dawson. It’s now her most treasured item in her collection, a special memory of a day she will never forget. Where her love for the Expos blossomed, and today, is a large part of her career.

“It was just such a grandiose day for me,” Tellier said of that first game at Olympic Stadium.

And although she can no longer watch Expos games, the experience of walking into other MLB stadiums — where her work is now displayed — is still, just as magical as that first time.

“It’s always the same feeling for me, I just get so excited when I see the green field,” she said.