“Why not give a damn about your fellow man?” asks a print by Corita Kent. The words refer to a song by the sunshine-pop band Spanky and Our Gang, and the image comes from a Life magazine cover. In these prints, Kent pairs seemingly unrelated text and image from advertising, pop culture, politics, literature, and the Bible, fusing them with the bold, bright colors of the 1960s. A nun from 1936 to 1968, Kent devoted her life and art to faith, justice, and peace.

Kent’s script demands close looking, an act that is filled with reward:

*… all life is to be lived in the spirit of rapt absorption in an arabesque of rhythms … * 1

… under a government which imprisons unjustly, the true place for a just man is also in prison … 2

… just meet the faces that you meet beyond the window’s pane … 3

1 Alan Watts 2 Henry David Thoreau 3 Spanky and Our Gang; song written by Stuart Scharf

From the exhibition: Give a damn. (June 30 – September 30, 2018)