When the Lounge Chair and Ottoman first debuted in 1956, it included an insert with a graphical breakdown of the chair’s components that featured hand-drawn calligraphy from their friend and fellow artist, Corita Kent.

Corita Kent was a multi-disciplinary artist, teacher, and social justice advocate. At the age of 18, Corita joined the Order at the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Los Angeles and went on to teach art at Immaculate Heart College, contributing to its robust art department and establishing the school as a hub for innovative thinking.

Not too far away on Abbot Kinney in Venice, Charles and Ray were pioneering new design and furniture making techniques using inventive methods They took common materials and transformed them in unprecedented ways. Over the span of their career, the Eameses were committed to creating high-quality, multi-functional furniture that was affordable to the average consumer and able to be mass-produced. Their signature style and their most distinguished designs, including the Lounge Chair and Ottoman, featured molded plywood. 

Corita Kent and the Eameses met in 1955 and quickly developed a devoted personal and professional friendship. One key component of Corita’s teaching practice involved taking students on field trips outside of the classroom to encourage them to visualize the world around them in different ways. A number of these field trips included visits to the Eames studio and home in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood of Los Angeles. Later on, as head of the art department at Immaculate Heart College, Corita would regularly invite renowned guest lecturers, including Charles Eames. 

These visits at the Eames House became a source of great inspiration for Corita and sparked a handful of practices that she implemented in her classrooms. Corita recounted that on a particular field trip to the Eames House, Charles had bought a hundred 12-inch cartons to entertain his visiting grandchildren. She adapted that idea into a project for her students to decorate 500 12-inch squares that were then pasted on the sides of cartons to create what she called “building blocks.” These blocks would go on to be a part of installations like the IBM “Peace on Earth” display.

During their respective careers, Corita Kent and the Eameses continually shaped the landscape of pop art and design. They influenced each other’s work and often collaborated on projects that melded their mediums together. Much like Corita’s calligraphy accompanying their furniture, Corita also included images of Eames chairs in her work as well. 

Through friendship, admiration, and collaboration, Corita Kent and the Eameses made significant and lasting contributions to the art world in the 20th century.

Featured image: Eames Lounge Chair and Ottoman graphical insert featuring lettering by Corita Kent.
Image provided by ©2022, 1956 Eames Office LLC (eamesoffice.com). All rights reserved.

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Through creative and innovative means, Corita Kent helped her students reconsider what it meant to be artists and showed them how to look at the world with new eyes. One technique Corita used to do this involved  “finders.” These were simply 35mm slide mounts, pieces of cardboard with a square cutout in the middle, that were used to mimic the viewfinder of a camera.

“A tool for looking is a finder. This is a device which does the same thing as the camera lens or viewfinder. It helps take things out of context, allows us to see for the sake of seeing, and enhances our quick-looking and decision-making skills.”

– Corita Kent from Learning by Heart: Teachings to Free the Creative Spirit (with Jan Steward).

Corita would often take her classes out on field trips to bustling intersections, full of different visual stimuli vying for attention, and challenge her students to isolate certain components of the urban landscape using their finders. She encouraged them to look at scenes with different perspectives and to crop out certain elements to take in specific details outside of a larger context. Corita referred to this practice as “visual decision-making.” 

The implementation of these “finders” came from Corita’s own fascination with photography. The camera’s viewfinder became an integral tool for Corita Kent’s serigraph practice — she would go around photographing various advertisements, signs, and billboards that were used as inspiration for her own art. Through her methods of cropping, Corita isolated larger images into distinct shapes, colors, and letters that would inspire the visual language of her screenprints. 

Corita Kent pushed the envelope of the art world not only with her own work but also through her teaching. Corita Kent’s “finders” continue to serve as reminders that it’s always important to slow down and take a look at the world in different ways. Every Blackwing 93 subscription comes with our own version of Corita’s “finders,” so you can practice “visual decision-making” for yourself.

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Corita Kent was an artist, educator, and social justice advocate that worked primarily in the medium of serigraphy. She became a cultural icon and luminary in the art world during the 1960s. Many of her works reflected the political, socio-economic, racial, and global challenges of that supercharged decade. After living as a nun in the Order of the Immaculate Heart since age 18, Corita Kent sought dispensation from the Church in 1968 and relocated to Boston.

In her later years, Corita continued to work in her preferred medium of screen printing while also developing a watercolor practice and creating large public art commissions. In 1971, Eli Goldston, the president of what was then called Boston Gas Company, commissioned Corita to paint one of the company’s two gas tanks that resided off of the highway. The project started with a 7-inch scale model on which Corita initially painted the iconic colors. The brightly colored swashes were then translated onto the actual 140-foot gas tank by a team of 20 sign painters.

Even though ownership of the gas tank has changed hands over the years, Corita’s “Rainbow Swash” remains. In the early 90s, the original tank was slated to be demolished. However, Mickey Myers, Corita’s former assistant, oversaw the project to recreate the design onto the new tank. Corita Kent’s “Rainbow Swash” still stands today, greeting commuters and visitors with a message of hope and optimism. 

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“Love the moment, and the energy of that moment will spread beyond the boundaries.”

From a small town in Iowa to the “City of Angels” and beyond, Corita Kent’s life and work pushed the envelope and expanded the boundaries of the art world. Kent’s artwork, mainly in the medium of serigraphy, challenged viewers and the world at large to embrace universal messages of hope, love, and the pursuit of justice.

Corita Kent was a multi-disciplinary artist, teacher, and social justice advocate. She was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa in 1918, but spent the majority of her upbringing in California after her family moved to Hollywood in 1923. In 1936, at the age of 18, Corita Kent joined the Order at the Immaculate Heart of Mary in Los Angeles. She then began teaching art at Immaculate Heart College, a school that became increasingly known for its thriving art department and creative thinking. In 1951, Corita went on to obtain her Master’s Degree in art history at the University of Southern California, where she also first started to explore the art of screen printing, which would go on to become her signature medium.

The 1960s were a turbulent and revolutionary time in America. It was a period of political unrest with growing demands for long-lasting social change, but also a moment when the art and media landscape were rapidly changing. During this time, Corita Kent became the chair of the art department at Immaculate Heart College and transformed it into a hub of innovative teaching and creative expression. Corita was able to bring together giants of art and design from Buckminster Fuller to Charles Eames to Saul Bass  as guest lecturers for her students. Through the lens of art, she taught her students to expand their worldview beyond borders and become active participants in political and social change.

These societal shifts were reflected in Corita’s personal art journey as well. Her work addressed the racial, socio-economic, and political landscape of the time. As the American government pushed further toward armed conflict, Corita used her art as a tool to create dialogue about the common good. She fused religious themes, bible verses, song lyrics, and pop culture into art that carried poignant anti-war sentiments. She believed that screen printing was one of the most democratic mediums available, making her art and her messages of love, hope, and justice as accessible to the public as possible.

During the late 1960s, Corita sought dispensation from her vows and relocated to Boston where she continued her screen-printing practice along with explorations in watercolor and commissioned public artworks. Some of her most iconic works include the 150-ft “Rainbow Swash” painted on the side of a natural gas tank and her “LOVE” United States Postal Service stamp that has sold 700 million copies to date. 

In 1986, with her passing, Corita left her legacy to the Immaculate Heart Community; who, in turn, established the Corita Art Center to preserve and educate the public about Corita Kent’s life, legacy, and advocacy. 

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