User:AlanaSwan

Elizabeth Shapiro Gilmore, aka: Betsy Cole, aka, Alana Swan

Elizabeth Shapiro, the artist, known in the 1960's and 1970's as Betsy Cole, then millenially as Alana Swan, was born in Marblehead, Massachusetts on December 08, 1943, to Edna and Bob Shapiro, an historian /docent and a surgeon respectively. thumb

A Radcliffe graduate, Betsy later went on to study at Boston's Museum School of Fine Arts where she studied under Henry Schwartz making a couple of fabulous Trompe L'oueil paintings but ultimately settled on photography as her medium of choice. While attending art school, Betsy was swept off her feet by a dashing young rock n' roller in attendance named Jonathan Robert Cole, who along with his band Quill was soon to be showcased at the Woodstock rock festival as the opening band on the first day. Luck was not on the young bands's side and technical errors prevented them from being recorded. Betsy and Jon were together long enough to create two daughters Samantha and Amanda Cole, both of whom also went into the arts. Betsy and Jon divorced in 1975 but stayed close to each other in Cambridgeport for a while, so that the children could wander back and forth between homes. Jon partnered up with Elizabeth Cleary and in 1981 moved to Hawaii Island.

In 1980 Betsy married Donald Douglass Gilmore, a very handsome software engineer with whom Betsy found true love. Circa 1995, the couple moved to Maui for a fresh start. While immersing herself in nature, Betsy recreated herself as Alana Swan, the swan having always been her totem animal or amakua as they say in Hawaiian. Alana spent the next eight years painting vibrant watercolor paintings until her death in in 2005 at her home in Kihei, surrounded by hundreds of loved ones, who literally sang her into her next life.