Corita Art Center

Preserves and promotes Corita Kent’s artistic and educational legacy and passion for social justice • #GetWithTheAction • corita.org

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Join the Corita Art Center and Greetings from South Central LA to celebrate the importance of art education as we collaborate on some fun Corita-inspired programming in the coming weeks! Swipe for more info about upcoming pop-ups, the virtual workshop, and learn how you can #GetWithTheAction! Stop by on 11/14 Hanks Mini Market and 11/21 Cruzitas Deli and Cafe to pick up a Corita 101 art box including the new heroes & sheroes zine worksheet, created by art educator Karina Esperanza Yánez and designed by the Design Lab at Otis College and printed in LA by Typecraft. 

11/14/2020 

11:30AM - 2:30 PM

Hank’s Mini Market 

3301 West Florence Avenue 

Los Angeles, CA

11/21/2020 

9:30AM - 12:30 PM

Cruzita’s Deli and Café 

7121 State Street

Huntington Park, CA 

1:30 - 3:00 PM

Virtual Workshop with art educator Karina Esperanza Yánez, Founder of Greetings from South LA. 

Join us on Zoom. All ages, all skill levels welcome, but we encourage you to pick up a Corita 101 art kit or download materials in advance!

Be sure to register:  bitly.ws/ax4q

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Celebrate virtually with the Corita Art Center on Corita's birthday this November 20th, at 6pm.

We would like to tip our party hats to you dear friends, and share (with the help of some special guests) the hard work we were able to accomplish through your support.  Help us continue to preserve Corita’s legacy and build a stronger collective community. Reserve your spot for the Corita Day virtual celebration and receive a complimentary gift box to help you enjoy the evening. Boxes will include special Corita merchandise, party supplies, and a sweet treat.

Visit our store to purchase tickets and reserve your box today!

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Corita Art Center is a project of the Immaculate Heart Community. Read the Immaculate Heart Community’s 2019 Annual Report, inspired by the “irregular bulletin.”

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Published intermittently by the Immaculate Heart College art department from 1956 - 1963, the "irregular bulletin" was a newsletter edited by the inimitable Sister Magdalen Mary, announcing the various activities and accomplishments of the students and faculty, including Corita, who succeeded Sister Magdalen Mary as head of the art department. So what was it, you ask? The "irregular bulletin" was initially comprised of a few pages of printed paper announcing departmental news, but it then quickly evolved into a longer and broader publication, with a distinct graphic style that in many ways presaged the formation of contemporary zines.

In this video, we hear from Juliette Bellocq and Hermine Lees, two women who collect the "irregular bulletin" and appreciate the unique creativity and ideas of Sister Magdalen Mary. Juliette Bellocq is a graphic designer who runs Handbuilt Studio, a practice dedicated to design for education, culture and activism. She designed the Immaculate Heart Community’s “irregular bulletin”-inspired 2019 Annual Report. Hermine Lees is a member of the Immaculate Heart Community. When asked to describe her relationship to Sister Magdalen Mary, she wrote, “a devoted student, sincere friend and caring helper in all her wild and wonderful endeavors.” 

Thanks to a grant from California Revealed, all issues of the "irregular bulletin" will soon be digitized. Stay tuned for details.

Corita Art Center is a project of the Immaculate Heart Community. Read their 2019 Annual Report, inspired by the “irregular bulletin,” here. 

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We've launched a new video series inspired by Corita Kent and Jan Steward's seminal text, Learning by Heart: Teachings to Free the Creative Spirit. This video introduces the main concepts in Learning by Heart – looking, sources, structure, connect + create, work + play, and celebrations. Over the next few months, we will be posting videos by artists around the world, who will share how they engage with these ideas in their own creative practice. If you want to brush up on a specific topic, they are all posted as individual videos as well. We hope you enjoy the series!

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Friends, We hope you are all staying safe, and finding moments of peace and hope during these uncertain times. To support community health and well-being, Corita Art Center is temporarily closed. We will update you with reopening information as soon as it is available. While we will miss seeing you at the Center, we are actively exploring ways to adapt Corita’s teachings so that we can all remain creatively connected in our homes and online. Stay tuned for updates. As ever, we take comfort in Corita’s art and words, and hope you do the same. ❤️, Corita Art Center

Corita Kent, "yes #3," 1979, serigraph, 20 x 20 inches © 2020 The Corita Art Center, The Immaculate Heart Community, Los Angeles.

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In 1985, the US Post Office released the Love Stamp designed by Corita Kent. This is the lesser-known story behind Corita's most well-known work.

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Now streaming, the inaugural event of The Great Humans Series, featuring Roxane Gay and Abbi Jacobson in conversation at Second Home Hollywood. The event is a reboot of the “Great Men Series,” a lecture series organized by Corita and the Immaculate Heart College Art Department in the 1960s. Lisa Congdon kicked off the event and set the stage for the unmoderated evening. What followed was a generous and engaging conversation between two creative women on topics ranging from the elusive work/life balance and the challenges of social media, to morning routines and the educators, friends, and family members who have encouraged their journey. We hope you enjoy watching these inspiring women, and stay tuned for an announcement about the next event in the series, coming this April!

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We had a hard time not highlighting every word in this clipping from “We Need Decembers,” an article by Corita in the December 1969 issue of Ladies Home Journal. Read the full article here.

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We are thrilled to announce that Wednesday, November 20th has been named #CoritaDayinLA. The honor falls on what would have been Corita Kent’s 101st birthday. Throughout Corita’s 100th year, we have ramped up our efforts to grow Corita’s legacy and introduce her to a new generation, both in Los Angeles and around the world. In that spirit, we want to honor her on Corita Day with an online celebration—or in 1960s terms, “a happening”—that will share her art and message of hope, love, and justice with an even wider audience.

If you aren’t yet familiar with Corita, we hope you celebrate Corita Day by getting to know this inspiring artist and educator: read her bio, follow us on Instagram or Facebook, or sign up for our newsletter!

If you are already well acquainted, we hope you will join our online “happening” and share Corita’s artwork, story, or teachings via social media on November 20th. We invite you to create your own artwork if you desire, but we also have a few sample posts here. Thank you for being a part of Corita’s legacy!

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Corita Art Center and CHIRLA, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, partnered to build an altar titled Corita Art Center x CHIRLA: amar la justicia for this year’s Dia de los Muertos celebration at Hollywood Forever cemetery. The altar honored members of the extended CHIRLA family lost in the struggle for immigrant rights.

Corita used bold and graphic serigraphs to expose injustice around the world while delivering a message of love, hope, and justice. In this spirit, the altar was constructed out of one of Corita’s favorite everyday items, the cardboard box, and featured an enlarged version of love justice, a serigraph she first created in 1966 which boldly depicts the Camus quote, “I should like to be able to love my country and still love justice,” in red, white, and blue. 

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For Corita, celebration was an art form. All celebrations contained variations on the same ingredients: special colors, words, clothes, processions, etc. Corita analyzed celebrations in this way in order to update and revitalize traditions. In August 2019, the Corita Art Center went to CicLAvia: Meet the Hollywoods to identify some of the ingredients of a celebration.

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plork, n. \ plôrk \ 1. : a portmanteau created by Corita Kent, combining the words "play" and "work."

...

We are mastering “plork” over at the Corita Art Center instagram page. Don’t miss out on the fun. Click through to follow us. 

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For the anniversary of the Watts Rebellion, we take an in depth look at Corita's "my people," from 1965.

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We found this great clipping from an interview with Corita in The New Yorker from 1966. May we all be blessed with Corita’s prolific productivity in the coming month. Don’t forget Rule # 7: The only rule is work!

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Introducing our "From the Archives" series, where we take a peek inside the archives at the Corita Art Center to share a lesser-known piece by Corita Kent.

 This first installment features Olivian Cha, our Curator and Collections Manager, uncovering a poster commissioned by the Poor People's Campaign in 1968 for their March on Washington. Olivian notes Corita's frequent use of newspaper clippings in her work, and how it illustrates her understanding of the media's growing impact on society.

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Save the date!🗓#Corita100 Celebration❗️🎈🎉💜 Saturday November 10, 2018 Blessed Sacrament School Auditorium 6441 Sunset Blvd Hollywood #coritakent