Friday, March 16, 2007

Corita Kent

When I was very young during the 1960s I was taken by the art of a nun named Sister Corita. She drew splashy, colorful posters and banners that united images and shapes with words, quotes and aphorisms from the Bible and later of well-known writers and poets. She often inserted her own poetry as well.

From Barnes & Noble.com:

At the age of 18, Corita Kent (1918-1986) entered the Roman Catholic order of Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Los Angeles, where she taught art a
nd eventually ran the art department. After more than 30 years, at the end of the 1960s, she left the order to devote herself to making her own work. Over a thirty-five-year career she made watercolors, posters, books and banners--and most of all serigraphs--in an accessible and dynamic style that appropriated techniques from advertising, consumerism and graffiti. The earliest of it, which she began showing in 1951, borrowed phrases and depicted images from the bible; by the 1960s, she was using song lyrics and publicity slogans as raw material.

Here is another of her other works:


Now a book will be published March 28, 2007 called Come Alive: The Spirited Art of Sister Corita

theteach

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