Love and energy

Love the moment, and the energy of that moment will spread beyond all boundaries.~
Sister Mary Corita Kent, I.H.M. (1918 - 1986)

Sister Mary Corita Kent was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa. With her family she moved to Vancouver, British Columbia and then to Los Angeles where she was educated in elementary school by the nuns of the Immaculate Heart order. In high school, the sisters encouraged her love of art. Before entering the convent of a teaching order at age eighteen, Frances Kent studied drawing and still life at Otis Art Institute. "Her interest in silk screen printing started quite by accident when she found an old screen lying around the art department... When she had trouble cleaning the screen, she was given informal instruction by... the wife of a Mexican muralist who had mastered silk screen techniques in order to reproduce her husband's paintings."1

Her early prints from around 1950 involved figurative religious subjects in a semiabstract style. Letters and words began to appear in 1954. By the 1960s, her prints became more hard-edged, with bright primary colors and strong social and religious messages. She compared her work to the tradition of "God-Bless-Our-Home" samplers.

Sister Corita's classes at Immaculate Heart College, where she’d been assigned to the faculty in the 1940s, were "events, happenings." Her leadership of the art department brought fame and crowds of visitors. There were also tensions and clashes with the head of the archdiocese. Her order encouraged members "to do their own thing," such as wearing street clothing and, in her case, designing prints in support of various social and political causes.

After thirty years as a nun, Corita Kent left her order and returned to private life to have more time for reflection and observation. She lived quietly in Boston, carrying out commissions for murals and other works. At her death, the major portion of her estate was bequeathed to Immaculate Heart College.