Fridagato

A Frida Kahlo inspired card that was mailed yesterday as part of the Geo Graphic Mail Project. 

125 years ago today the great artist Diego Rivera was born.  On his birthday in 1940, he was in San Francisco.  Rivera celebrated his birthday by marrying Frida Kahlo for the second time.  It’s easy to imagine what Diego and Frida would be doing if they were in San Francisco in 2011.  They’d be marching and participating in the Occupy Wall Street movement.  Would security let Comrade Diego back inside at the Pacific Stock Exchange to see his own work?  Diego Rivera’s first San Francisco mural is inside, “safe” from the prying eyes of the general public and the rabble in the streets.

Today is Frida Kahlo’s birthday.  Born on this day in 1910.  There are official records which claim Frida was born on July 6, 1907.  But Frida proclaimed her birthday was July 7, 1910.  She wanted her year of birth to coincide with the beginning Mexican Revolution.   As for the truth in this matter, when you’re Frida Kahlo, you get to choose your birthday.  So for Frida, an icon… 

I own a Fulton Sign & Price Markers set.  It’s this set of old rubber stamps that would have been used by a 19^th Century businesses to make signs.  It includes all the letters, numbers, dollar, pound and cent signs as well as special stamps with terms like “per dozen” and “per pound.”  My dad picked this up in some old junk store or the Goodwill in Buffalo about 40 years back.  As a kid I used to love playing with it.  It followed us to New England and got lost in the attic until I rediscovered it in the 1990’s and brought it back to San Francisco.

I used the set to make text for some of my mixed media work in the 1990’s.  I liked it so much that it also was used to create the titles for my webpage back then.  These sets are still out there and can be found online.  I even found a free font based on it.

There is a new book by Barbara Levine called Finding Frida Kahlo.  It’s a collection of Frida Kahlo’s reproduced letters and ephemera.  The book is jammed with details for anyone who really is a fan of her life and work.  I got excited to see that Frida Kahlo hand stamped her name on one of her suitcases.  It was obvious that she used a Fulton Sign & Price Markers set.  Yes, I like saying that Frida and I use some of the same tools.