I work as a student employee in the Fabrication Facility and the Printmaking Facility in the 623 South Wabash Columbia College Chicago building. In semesters past I have only worked in the 10th floor in the Fabrication Facility. However, after taking the Printmaking I class last semester, I felt comfortable signing myself up to work a shift in the Printmaking facility. Even though I had previously taken a five-week screen-printing class, and had therefore used the facility, I felt like I wouldn’t know what all the tools were and where everything goes. (Spoiler, I still don’t.)

Having a five hour shift down here on Thursdays at the end of my school week has been really nice. As it is still early in the semester, it is quiet in the facility at this time. I have time to, as I call it, get paid to work on homework… or get paid to procrastinate my homework, depending on what kind of mood I am in.

Two weeks ago, I was sitting at the check-in desk, trying to work on my blog post for the week. One of the shop techs, Atlan, was aiding me in procrastination by discussing all kinds of interesting things. One of my favorite parts about working in these facilities is getting to pick the brains of the Instructional Specialists – art-making professionals who work to instruct students on the tools, safety procedures, and keep the shops running. While each Instructional Specialist has different focuses, I have been watching Atlan working on some cool sign-painting and woodcut printing projects recently. On this day he was working on a sign for the exhibition YAWN SIGH! at Mayfield Art Space in Forest Park, Illinois. As my own mode of procrastination, I was working on collaging some imagery copied out of a Crap Hound book for use in a layer of a screen-print. (After doing that 5-week screen-printing class freshman year and really enjoying it, I have been itching to get into the 15-week screen-printing class that is offered. Now, senior year, I am finally in it! Woohoo!)

We were talking about school, art, and how one gets into specific art practices such as sign-painting. (We also discussed my recent post on Hired Hand Signs, who Atlan also follows on Instagram). We touched on what I might do after college with my combination of interests in fine art and my major in graphic design, and the projects coming up for my screen-printing class, when Atlan pulled out a book from the printmaking resource bookshelf that he thought I might like. The bright colors and obscured text on the cover of Come Alive! The Spirited Art of Sister Corita by Julie Ault immediately caught my eye. I was then in the depths of a much less talkative procrastination technique, reading through information about an influential woman in art. Though she has some similar interests to me, and also some major differences in her life to mine, I had never heard of Corita Kent.

When I think of nuns, or hear the word “Sister” as a prefix to someone’s name, I immediately think of The Sound of Music. It may be one of the earliest movies I remember watching. My dad had the soundtrack saved for me on his first iPod Touch, years before I had my own, and when we visited Vienna, Austria for a family friend’s wedding, we went on a tour of all the filming sites. (Unfortunately, they do not let people reenact the “Sixteen, Going on Seventeen” dance in the gazebo anymore, because some old woman broke her hip jumping from bench to bench.) However, I would never have previously thought of a nun and screenprinting in the same sentence. Yet, here I was, reading about Sister Corita, a nun in the Order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary since 1936, a teacher at the Immaculate Heart College since 1947, and a screenprinter since 1951.

What I find most interesting about Sister Corita is the dynamic nature of her life, in a lifestyle that many people might at first perceive as stagnant. Born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, in November 1919, Frances Elizabeth Kent moved with her family to Hollywood, California in 1923. After graduating from a Catholic girl’s high school, she joins the Order of the Immaculate Heart of Mary in 1936 (at around 17 years old) and takes her new name of Sister Mary Corita. She finishes her BA education at Immaculate Heart College in 1941 (at around 22 years old). She then is assigned to teach primary school in British Columbia, Canada, in 1944 (at around 25 years old). In 1947, she returns to Immaculate Heart College to teach in the art department, and therefore starts graduate school at University of Southern California (at around 28 years old). Sister Corita completes her master’s degree in 1951, and only begins screen-printing near the completion of that degree (at around 32 years old).

I include her approximate age at the time of these events to put her life into perspective for myself. The art and work that she became famous for in the 1960s was not even introduced to her until she was 32. In today’s society, I feel so much pressure to have my life figured out before graduating college. While things have certainly changed, Sister Corita’s path of growing up, finding her place in the Order, and continuing her education, before her “life” as we know it really began, is a good reminder that I have plenty of time.

I admire Corita’s use of bright colors in her work, her manipulation of typography and the use of her own handwriting. I love that she defied what I would consider to be the typical interests of nuns, using her work to interact with activism, the fight again racism, and political advocacy. The fact that her interest in screen-printing was partially fueled by wanting to make her artwork affordable and available to the masses is also admirable.

After much success, travel, teaching and commissions, Sister Corita took a sabbatical in Cape Cod, Massachusetts for two months, apparently planning to return to Immaculate Heart in her role as Art Department chair. She made a surprising decision at the end of her sabbatical to seek dispensation from her vows as a nun, and leaves California to live on her own for the first time. She gets an apartment alone in Boston in 1970 (at around 51 years old).

This is also inspiring to me, as someone who wants to try living alone, but am unsure how I would do in that environment. I have been feeling rushed lately in that it seems that post-graduation might be the only chance I have at living on my own. I currently have a partner, who, funnily enough, is Catholic – which made learning about a nun all the more interesting to me – and who is anxious to start living together. Seeing a picture of Corita’s space on her own makes me curious about what my space could look like if I had time to cultivate it on my own. But, at the same time, her story reminds me that there is always time to do the things you want to do – she did not live alone until her 50s.

This blog post is a little all over the place, but I think it is fitting, as Corita is interesting and inspiring to me in a little of all the ways: her designs, her art practice, her life story, her choice to change her lifestyle after so many years. I feel really lucky that I was in a position to chat with Atlan and have him show me this artist on a whim. I would love to visit the Corita Art Center, which is set to reopen in Los Angeles in March 2025, on my next trip to California. Thanks for reading!