What's All This About? Finding a Personal History

When asked to find a favorite cousin of a deceased relative for a friend, I found much more than a name.  I found the door to a world full of artists, authors, poets, models, and playwrites; a world of bright colors, bohemian living, and unconventional characters.  This world, however exhilarating, existed in the past.  The cousins of the deceased were also deceased, they were Marc Chagall and his second wife, who'd arrived from New York and who also lived in France at that time.  As I found their names, I was done with the favor, but not with the investigation about these larger-than-life artists.st

The moment I walked in to the gallery show of Marc Chagall's art, I was consumed with awe, like a child at the circus.  I laughed and gasped, oohed and awed at the goat-headed man getting married, at the acrobats flying from their trapeeze, and the bull in the armchair's colors on fire!  I was unable to turn away, my attention caught by parisienes who no longer existed and who had been the cousin of a photographer I knew and coincidentally had learned from - getting paid quarters to run the stop bath in the studio as a child.

I dug deeper into the artists world. I snuck flowers designed by his parisiene grand-daughter, visited Cafe Rotunde's latest cafe in Monmartre, and visited Chagall's studio in Nice, France, where he painted and lived with his second wife - the New York cousin - before he died.  What I ended up writing is a play about the
four years Marc Chagall spent in Paris, getting accepted to the Salons most noted in the world, and beginning a fascinating career from his meager beginnings.  I know there is an old, OPB series called The Painters  about La Ruche and Chagall's early years in Paris (but it is not specifically about Chagall) which had already been done.  This, however, is my detective case, the end of a journey. This was the past I wanted to visit, I think because I thought I had lived there before, as if a tiny-sized woman appeared, like a ghost, in the air above, and I thought it my author's duty to tell what she knew. At least, she knew something about bears. [It's in the play.]

This play is formed like a journey through research, experience, and a fascination of these particular early, modern artists.  I wanted to tell all that I found rather than give a report.  It's what I like about these people I never met and the drama I researched.  Its also, as close to their lives as I could get it, so that there is authenticity and biography overtaking the fiction.  In its pages, I pieced together what I found romantic, irresistible - like a gossip - and biographically unforgettable.  I hope to make you laugh, gasp, and keep your windows intact.  If not, I'm campaigning for an Oregon Book Award - and this, I know, has made more than one of you gasp!