Edited by Julie Ault, Jason Fulford, Jordan Weitzman. Text by Olivian Cha.
Corita Kent’s photographs of vernacular inspiration—from street signs and folk art to kites, parades and fairs
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.
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
Frieze
Andrew Durbin
Famous for her screenprints of the 1960s and ’70s, the artist is the subject of a new book that reconsiders a lesser-known aspect of her multifaceted practice
Collector Daily
Blake Andrews
The pictures are omnivorous and abundant, just like Corita. It’s this profligacy which really gets to the core of her work since, whether screen printing or shooting pictures, she believed sincerely in a democracy of content.
Aperture
Brendan Embser
Ordinary Things is the rare photobook that appeals to children and adults alike, bursting as it is with joy and curiosity.
Blind
Miss Rosen
As Ordinary Things Will Be Signs for Us reveals, Kent’s gift lay in distilling the magical and miraculous experiences of beauty and grace that surround us if we choose to look. They exist in moments of connection and communion, be it with one another, the natural world, or the ineffable encounters with something greater still.
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Join us Friday, November 10 (preview party 6–9 PM) through Sunday, November 11 at Boston's Cyclorama Building for the Boston Art Book Fair, where we will be featuring a mix of new and noteworthy titles and books relating to Boston artists and exhibitions. We are proud to be an exhibiting sponsor! continue to blog
How we love the sense of wonder and surprise in Corita Kent: Ordinary Things Will Be Signs for Us, out now from J&L Books and Magic Hour Press. Collecting a selection of the influential artist, graphic designer and former religious sister’s photographs—most of which were made while out on “viewfinding sessions” with her students from the Immaculate Heart College art department—it’s a feast for the eyes, the heart and the soul, carefully culled from more than fifteen-thousand 35mm slides made 1955–1968, edited by Julie Ault, Jason Fulford and Jordan Weitzman with text by Olivian Cha. continue to blog
How we love the sense of wonder and surprise in Corita Kent: Ordinary Things Will Be Signs for Us, out now from J&L Books and Magic Hour Press. Collecting a selection of the influential artist, graphic designer and former religious sister’s photographs—most of which were made while out on “viewfinding sessions” with her students from the Immaculate Heart College art department—it’s a feast for the eyes, the heart and the soul, carefully culled from more than fifteen-thousand 35mm slides made 1955–1968, edited by Julie Ault, Jason Fulford and Jordan Weitzman with text by Olivian Cha. continue to blog
Published by J&L Books/Magic Hour Press. Edited by Julie Ault, Jason Fulford, Jordan Weitzman. Text by Olivian Cha.
Corita Kent’s photographs of vernacular inspiration—from street signs and folk art to kites, parades and fairs
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.
