Corita Art Center

The Collection

Walk into the gallery and you see walls covered with bright serigraphs featuring overlapping text and images. Kent’s prints pull from Wonder Bread packages, street signs, and protest slogans, all rendered in the saturated yellows, magentas, and cyans that defined 1960s graphic design. The current Heroes and Sheroes exhibition shows 29 prints she created between 1968 and 1969, a series honoring figures like Martin Luther King Jr., Cesar Chavez, and Robert Kennedy. Her handwritten text layers over photographs and abstracted forms, creating visual essays that require close reading.

The gallery space feels intimate. Most pieces hang at eye level in a single room, allowing you to move between works and notice how Kent repeated certain compositional strategies. She often placed lowercase letters over images, creating what looks like accidental collisions between words and pictures. The effect draws you in to decipher meaning from the layered elements.

Kent’s Artistic Evolution

Kent joined the Immaculate Heart of Mary order at 18 and spent two decades teaching art before developing her signature style. Her early work featured figurative religious imagery, but a 1962 visit to an Andy Warhol exhibition at Ferus Gallery changed her approach. She began incorporating commercial imagery and text, using silkscreen printing to create editions that could reach wide audiences. The center’s archive includes preparatory materials showing how she built compositions through layers of cut paper and handwritten notes to printers.

By the mid-1960s, her work had become explicitly political. Prints addressing poverty, racism, and the Vietnam War put her at odds with the conservative Los Angeles Archdiocese. Cardinal James McIntyre called her work blasphemous and forced most sisters out of their teaching positions. Kent left the order in 1968 and moved to Boston, continuing to create serigraphs until her death from cancer in 1986.

The Visit

Reservations are required, keeping visitor numbers small. Tours run on Saturday afternoons, with staff available to discuss Kent’s techniques and context. The exhibitions change regularly, rotating works from the collection and presenting thematic groupings. Some visits coincide with workshops where participants create their own prints using Kent’s compositional strategies.

The gift shop sells reproductions, books about Kent’s life and work, and merchandise featuring her designs. Proceeds support the center’s educational programs and preservation work.

Practical Considerations

The center occupies a third-floor suite in a building that also houses Groundwork Coffee on the ground floor. The space is small, with most visits lasting 45 minutes to an hour. ADA accessibility is complete, with step-free access throughout. The intimate scale means you can examine prints closely and ask questions without navigating crowds.

The Arts District location puts the center near restaurants, breweries, and galleries. Street parking requires patience, with paid lots available on Traction Avenue within a few blocks. The Little Tokyo-Arts District Metro station sits half a mile away.