Hey everybody, this week I wanted to make light of an exhibit running from April 26th to June 15th at the Andrew Kreps Gallery in New York, New York. The artist, Corita Kent, drew inspiration from Andy Warhol’s work and used ideas from the everyday life of people to inform her creations.
The Andrew Kreps’ gallery website noted that “Corita Kent was an artist, educator, and advocate for social justice. In 1936, Corita joined the Order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, taking the name Sister Mary Corita. She began teaching in the Immaculate Heart College art department by 1947 and produced her first serigraphs in the early 50s”.
The article went on to explain that “while her first prints consisted of dense, figurative compositions with religious themes and iconography, by 1962—after seeing Andy Warhol’s Campbell’s Soup Cans at Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles—her work evolved into a singular mode of Pop art. Reflecting a wide breadth of disciplinary interests, her bright compositions were not limited to the staple imagery and language of consumer and mass culture but also integrated philosophy, literature, street signage, scripture, and song lyrics in bold text and abstract forms”.
Her work, although just starting to have been created in the 50s/60s is still relevant today. Kent was quoted saying ““It is a huge danger to pretend awful things do not happen. But you need enough hope to keep on going. I am trying to make hope. And you have to grab it where you can” and her work is a call to arms of sharing love and peace and learning how to grow through pain. To learn more about the exhibit you can go to the gallery’s website http://www.andrewkreps.com/exhibitions/corita-kent/press-release .
