CORITA ART CENTER
Corita Kent (1918–1986) was an artist, educator, and advocate for social justice. Sister Corita, widely known as the “pop art nun” in the 1960s, used her art to advocate for women's rights and to fight racism, poverty, and the Vietnam War. The Corita Art Center preserves and promotes Corita Kent’s life and work through exhibition loans, public programs, image / merchandising rights, and the sale of Corita’s original prints.
In 2019, Two Tigers Productions was tasked in helping the center bring Corita’s legacy to a wider audience. As a follower of Kent’s work, I joined the effort by creating a cohesive, yet dynamic, visual strategy across new public programming, awareness campaigns, partnerships, community activations, and various marketing materials.
Creative directors: Two Tigers Productions / strategy and production: Carolyn Sams, Julie Rosing / Screen Printing: Nathan Montijo / DESIGN: NOOPUR AGARWAL
Two Tigers Productions brought the Corita Art Center and CHIRLA, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, together to build an altar titled Corita Art Center x CHIRLA: amar la justicia for the 2019 Dia de los Muertos celebration at the Hollywood Forever cemetery. The altar honored members of the extended CHIRLA family lost in the struggle for immigrant rights. Two Tigers Productions commissioned me to work with collaboratively with them in conceptualizing and designing the installation.
Corita was a visual artist, but she was also an amazing teacher who developed an inventive pedagogy that trained students to look at the world in new and different ways. I was one, of a series of artists around the country, asked to make a video from inside my home, sharing how Corita's teachings on “looking” have played a role in my own creative practice. The ideas discussed in this video series were adapted from Corita Kent and Jan Steward's book, "Learning by Heart: Teaching to Free the Creative Spirit."
In preparation for the Women’s March, Metablic Studio collaborated with Corita Art Center and the Center for the Study of Political Graphics during one of their public “Interdependence Salons”. Participants were able to silkscreen shirts, signs and banners. Screens, provided by the Corita Art Center, included some of Corita’s own imagery, as well a custom screen I typeset—“joyful revolutionary”.
A series of one-pagers were designed in efforts to raise funds, generate interest / investment from partners for the center and for new, early-stage programming.
Working collaboratively, I designed over a dozen pieces of social media content amplifying Corita’s legacy and the Corita Art Center’s initiatives—the official designation of November 20th as “Corita Day” in the city and county of Los Angeles, helping to save Corita’s former studio building as a historic-cultural monument, and The Great Humans Series. I also helped develop the visual design strategy for future branded web assets.
