When amateur filmmakers - sporting Super-8 cameras - set
out to document Bigfoot sightings in Washington State in the 1960s, one
researcher, Tarah DeLuge, had a love-at-first-sighting encounter with the cryptid
creature. She strayed from the path on Wilde Ridge long enough to bump in to
the beast. Their eyes locked, followed by their arms... and then a strange
exchange ensued. Nine months later, Lillouette was born. She bore her mother's
porcelain-doll face and her father's plush-toy fur. While kept closely guarded
from the press - and public - the girl did pose for the famous portraitist, Rolando
Choy, at his Fairmont Heights studio in 1972. Over three days, she sat - all
doe-eyed - while Mr. Choy painted his masterpiece, "Little Furry
One". Tarah DeLuge regretted allowing a mass-produced reproduction to be sold
shortly after the painting's completion. (The print was the second-biggest
selling reproduction after the Mona Lisa.) Mother and daughter lived in relative
seclusion until Tarah's death, from cancer, in 1981. Lillouette moved to
Colorado in the early 1980s. She died tragically in an electrical fire in 1988.
In 2009, "Little Furry One" sold at auction for $2.5 million, a
record price for a Rolando Choy painting.
© BILL BLAIR 2012
