AMAZING SHOW GOING ON @
MOCA CLEVELAND ON HER WORK***
June 27, 2014 — August 31, 2014
SISTER CORITA KENT
sister+artist
for MikE S.
Corita was born Frances Kent in 1918 in Fort Dodge, Iowa. She grew up in Los Angeles and joined the Order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1936, taking the name Sister Mary Corita.
She graduated from Immaculate Heart College in 1941 and then taught grade school in British Columbia. In 1946 she returned to Immaculate Heart College to teach art. In 1951, she received a master’s degree in art history from the University of Southern California; it is also the year she exhibited her first silkscreen print. Corita’s earliest works were largely iconographic; known as "neo-gothic" they borrowed phrases and depicted images from the Bible.
By the 1960s, she was using popular culture (such as song lyrics and advertising slogans) as raw material for her meaning-filled bursts of text and color. Corita’s cries for peace in the era of Vietnam were not always welcome. In 1965 her "Peace on Earth" Christmas exhibit in IBM’s New York show room was seen as too subversive and Corita had to amend it. However, her work continued to be an outlet for her activism—in Corita's words:
"I am not brave enough to not pay my income tax and risk going to jail. But I can say rather freely what I want to say with my art."
"I am not brave enough to not pay my income tax and risk going to jail. But I can say rather freely what I want to say with my art."
By then Corita was the chairman of the famous Immaculate Heart College Art Department. Buckminster Fuller described his visit to the department as "among the most fundamentally inspiring experiences of my life." Other influential friends of hers included Charles Eames, Ben Shahn, Harvey Cox and the Berrigan brothers. August was Corita’s time for her own art making. During the three weeks between semesters, she and her students would work round the clock printing new serigraph designs by the hundreds.
Corita’s chronic insomnia no doubt made some of this possible, but it was often accompanied by a bleak depression. In 1968 Corita decided to devote herself entirely to making art. She left the Order and Los Angeles, and moved to Boston’s Back Bay. She made numerous commissioned works (Westinghouse Group W ads, book covers and murals) and continued to create her own serigraphs (over 400) in the next 18 years. Still using exuberant splashes of color, the tone of her work became more generally spiritual and introspective.
Watercolor "plein air" paintings and great floral silk screens dominated her later works. Corita remained active in social causes and designed posters and billboards for countless organizations including Amnesty International. The Boston Gas tank on the Southeast Expressway still bears her famous 150-foot rainbow swash, which is a similar to her design for the 1985 Love Stamp. She passed away in 1986.
The Boston Gas tank on the Southeast Expressway still bears her famous 150-foot rainbow swash.
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you just saw the Brilliant work of :
SISTER CORITA KENT
