Frida and Me

Another fun assignment for Beginning Performance. We had to do a self-portrait as a famous artist and document it with photos. I chose Frida Kahlo. Back in the early 80's when I was drawing with Pat and Dewitt Hardy, they noticed that I was doing alot of self-portraits and said my work reminded them of Kahlo's. I had not heard of her, so they pulled a book from their art library and showed me her work. It's hard to imagine a time when Kahlo's work was unknown - she has become a cult image in the past twenty years! I've read several biographies about Frida Kahlo and was fascinated to learn that when 19th century Tehuana women found petticoats in European shipwrecks, they would wear them as headdresses! These two self-portraits by Kahlo show her wearing this wonderfully strange head gear. I used one of my mother's fancy square dance petti-coats to pose for these photos. Funny.