Manipulating Text

Similar to many Pop artists of the period such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, Corita found inspiration in colorful world of 1960s consumer advertising. Using recognizable slogans from contemporary advertisements such as "Humble Research Works Wonders With Oil" for the Humble Oil and Refining Company seen in, we care (1966), Corita encouraged her viewers to find new meaning in the mundane aspects of everyday life.^#

Inspired to create curved textual designs after taking photographs of student posters decorating the walls of Immaculate Heart on one of their annual Mary’s Day celebrations, Corita began intentionally incorporating this curved form text manipulation into her own printmaking in the 1966.^# Corita described her process for creating these curved textual designs for her screenprints in an oral history from 1976. "I took pictures from magazines and combined them the way I wanted, and then I would curl the paper to go the way I wanted it to and shoot the photograph, the slide, and then enlarge that and cut the stencil from that."^# Photographic slides documenting this process can be found at the Corita Art Center.

Humble Oil and Refining Company Advertisement, published in LIFE. Aug 26, 1966.
Michael Duncan, "Someday is Now: The Art of Corita Kent," Someday is Now: The Art of Corita Kent Ian Berry and Michael Duncan eds. The Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery exh. cat. (New York: DelMonico Books, 2013) 18.
Bernard Galm, Los Angeles Art Community: Group Portrait: Corita Kent. Oral History 1976. (The Regents of the University of California, 1977) 45-46.