Sister Corita

I work at a place called the Corita Art Center http://corita.org/which is a small non profit gallery that oversees the work of Corita Kent, aka Sister Corita. Corita was a nun artist, most well known for her pop art images of the 1960s. She was regarded as figurehead for the reformation of the church and was even on the cover of Newsweek . Her prints subverted commercial imagery and slogans in order to speak about social, political, and religious issues. Some speculate that her Mary's day celebrations, which were big happenings at her college, Immaculate Heart, inspired parts of the summer of love in 1969. Immaculate Heart College hosted luminaries like Buckminster Fuller, Alfred Hitchcock and Ray and Charles Eames, and Corita was known for her demanding and unconventional teaching techniques.
In short, she was pretty damn awesome.
Corita lived in a community of radical nuns who all eventually decided to leave the order due to pressure from the conservative Los Angeles archdiocese, and now I get to work with some of them. These women were real rebels, despite their religious titles back in the day and they remain smart, interesting, and fiesty.
There has been a recent resurgence of interest in Corita's work, some of the most recent shows were at SF Moma, PS1 and lots or international museums and galleries that would take too much effort for me to spell correctly. Things are pretty busy.
It would have been Corita's 90th birthday this month( she died of cancer in the 80's) so this weekend we had a celebration and Aaron Rose, curato, write, art man extraodinare, and Director of Beautiful Losers http://www.beautifullosers.com/ , began interviewing members of the community who knew Corita. I'm really excited to see what comes of the footage and the exhibition Aaron is mounting in February!