Someday is Now: The Art of Corita Kent

Published with Tang Museum at Skidmore College.

For Corita Kent, printmaking was a populist medium to communicate with the world around her. This activist spirit came most alive in the 1960s, when her posters and murals addressed subjects such as racism and poverty, US military brutalities in Vietnam and conflicts between radical and conservative positions in the Catholic Church. Her posters, murals and signature serigraphs combined messages of love and faith with images from popular culture and inventive use of type and color.
Originally published in 2013 and long out of print, the most comprehensive monograph on Kent's work finally returns in a brilliant showcase of prints and ephemera from all phases of her life, revealing her importance as an activist printmaker and a stylistic innovator in graphic design. It includes not just the 1960s serigraphs for which she is best known, but also early abstractions and text pieces as well as lyrical works made in the 1970s and 1980s. Full of the lively, colorful work that is so iconically hers, this volume presents four decades of a life dedicated to serving others through and with the language of art. Someday is Now is punctuated by scholarship, selected writings by Kent herself, interviews with former students and collaborators, and responses to her work from a wide variety of artists, curators and designers.
Artist, activist, teacher and devout Catholic Corita Kent (1918–86) eloquently combined her passions for faith and politics during her rich and varied career. As a teacher at Los Angeles' Immaculate Heart College, she fostered a creative and collaborative arts community and developed an interest in printmaking. By 1968, her art was enormously popular. She remained active in social causes until her death in 1986.