Corita Kent

Published with Tang Museum at Skidmore College.

For Corita Kent, printmaking was a populist medium to communicate with the world around her. This activist spirit came most alive in the 1960s, when her posters and murals addressed subjects such as racism and poverty, US military brutalities in Vietnam and conflicts between radical and conservative positions in the Catholic Church. Her posters, murals and signature serigraphs combined messages of love and faith with images from popular culture and inventive use of type and color.
Originally published in 2013 and long out of print, the most comprehensive monograph on Kent's work finally returns in a brilliant showcase of prints and ephemera from all phases of her life, revealing her importance as an activist printmaker and a stylistic innovator in graphic design. It includes not just the 1960s serigraphs for which she is best known, but also early abstractions and text pieces as well as lyrical works made in the 1970s and 1980s. Full of the lively, colorful work that is so iconically hers, this volume presents four decades of a life dedicated to serving others through and with the language of art. Someday is Now is punctuated by scholarship, selected writings by Kent herself, interviews with former students and collaborators, and responses to her work from a wide variety of artists, curators and designers.
Artist, activist, teacher and devout Catholic Corita Kent (1918–86) eloquently combined her passions for faith and politics during her rich and varied career. As a teacher at Los Angeles' Immaculate Heart College, she fostered a creative and collaborative arts community and developed an interest in printmaking. By 1968, her art was enormously popular. She remained active in social causes until her death in 1986.

Corita Kent, formerly Sister Mary Corita, is known for her exuberant, colorful serigraphs and her teaching, as evidenced in her lively art classes. As a Catholic nun from 1936 until 1968, Corita lived and worked in the Immaculate Heart of Mary community in Los Angeles. She taught lettering and layout, image finding, and art structure for 20 years in Immaculate Heart College’s art department. There, she screened multiple films simultaneously, hosted guest thinkers including Saul Bass, Buckminster Fuller and John Cage, and guided the making of large-scale collaborative projects with students.
Corita regularly took her students out for looking sessions at a used car lot or an art exhibition. While constantly looking and discovering visually, Corita shot thousands of 35 mm slides documenting references, the IHC milieu and the art department processes. For Corita, the vernacular environs of advertising, supermarkets and the city’s media landscape were a source of inspiration and raw material. Her slide collection encompasses a wide range of subjects: cookies, coke bottles, toys, presents, experiments, projects, Mary’s Day celebrations stemming from Corita’s classroom, flowers, magazines, seeds, puppets, visits with Charles and Ray Eames, street signs, trade fairs, folk art, boxes, billboards and kites. Drawing from the Corita Art Center’s vast slide collection, Ordinary Things Will Be Signs for Us embodies Corita’s philosophy of looking.
Corita Kent (1918–86) was known for her iconic art, innovative teaching methods and messages of social justice. Born Frances Elizabeth Kent in Fort Dodge, Iowa, she entered the order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Hollywood at age 18. As a professor and later chair of the art department, she helped establish its reputation as a hub of creativity and liberal thinking. By 1968, her art was enormously popular, showing in more than 230 exhibitions and held in public and private collections around the world. She remained active in social causes until her death in 1986.

Radical American artist, educator and Catholic nun, Corita Kent’s (1918–86) provocative and elaborate serigraphy has entranced audiences for over four decades. Originally completed in 1968, Kent’s International Signal Code Alphabet encompasses a series of 26 kaleidoscopic serigraphs integrating scripture, typography, image, icon and the maritime flags of the International Code of Signals.

As 2018 marks the 50th anniversary of both the series’ completion and the centennial of Kent’s birth, this celebratory publication, produced in collaboration with the Corita Art Center, reproduces for the first time the International Signal Code Alphabet in this handsome and eye-grabbing yellow clothbound volume.

An informative introduction written by Corita Art Center Director, Ray Smith, and a foreword authored by artist and curator Aaron Rose accompany the serigraphs.