Memoirous

Since March I’ve been thrown into all kinds of Covid havoc. All the things we used to say such as you are not the product of your productivity or your identity is not your job might have worked at one time—like when I had a job, before the pandemic lay waste to my routine. People who still have a routine or are kept busy with Zoom meetings seem to have no idea of how it feels to flounder, to be unmoored without time structure. It was a big reason by I simply took off at the end of May when things opened up to do my cross-country bike trip to Seaside, OR. On my bike ride I experienced structure—albeit one I had no control over. I never knew what the day’s weather or roads might bring. You can have a map, but that only goes so far in telling us how the journey will transpire. I’d awake everyday before dawn and as a sliver of yolk was breaking on the horizon was ready to set out. I’d eat and rest as needed (or not, again as the road allowed). By evening I was READY to stop. I’d shower...

I’ve always hated Halloween in Chicago—you would too unless you like getting hit with eggs or out-of-control-teens running wild on the streets. I know . . . I sound like an old lady fussing. For the past few years I’ve just avoided being out at night on Halloween. Kids will be kids. Except this year. I’m not sure what to expect. We’ll have fewer trick or treaters. Everyone will be masked. Candy will be delivered through a PVC pipe chute. Sort of a hands-off approach, yet still fun. But I also suspect it will be quieter, a bit lonelier on the street. Chicago under Covid lockdown felt like a ghost town, so on Halloween it will be especially creepier. Empty sidewalks under street lights. trick or treat candy chute for hands-free safe delivery

 Damn everything but the circus!   …damn everything that is grim, dull, motionless, unrisking, inward turning, damn everything that won’t get into the circle, that won’t enjoy, that won’t throw its heart into the tension, surprise, fear and delight of the circus, the round world, the full existence… --e.e. cummings I’ve tried to track down the source of this quote and found nothing but head scratching. “The first sentence is from Act I, Scene II of e.e. cummings play: Him. It is also known as "the acrobat's passage". The rest of the quote was apparently written by someone else. It does not appear in the play (published in 1927). "Damn everything but the circus!" is original with cummings, although often attributed to a female author, who may have used the quote as a title for a book. URL: https://able2know.org/topic/46665-1 Others contend It is not a poem but a part of a series of lectures titles "i Six Nonlectures" Comprising...

In 1968 at age 50 Corita (she decided to retain the name attached to her art life, Frances forever would be buried in the past) extended her sabbatical by withdrawing her vows and leaving the order. At the time she was drawn to the poetry of several transcendental writers. This is where I discovered Corita—Googling the e.e. cummings poem, Damn the circus I was considering an epigraph for my non-fiction manuscript about cycling the UK from the very top to Land’s End. I needed something that conveyed the tension, the push and pull of fear and adrenaline, the tight wire of risk. The funny thing about risk is that it makes life interesting. Those who avoid it lead safe, stable mediocre lives. It is the person who steps away, who dares to lose sight of the shore that ventures forth to discover. Sometimes we find out something entirely new about ourselves, the world when we take a chance. This high wire act has all the pros and cons of every major decision—but it is about facing these decis...

Lately it seems as if three thousand times a day I breathe out the words: God help me. Walking through the labyrinth has been an exercise into going forward and giving myself up to the unknown. Sister Corita made the difficult decision to leave her comfort zone, the environment of the convent where she had bloomed—and, in fact, was a star. At the school and convent she was often times the center of attention, her opinions mattered and were sought out. Here she was: about to leave her safety net. For what? The world in 1968 was raft with violence. The assassination of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the images on TV of bodies piling up from the war in Vietnam, rioting in the cities. Sister Corita’s reaction to this was Yes, daisy petal She was saying yes to a new life, but who would she be? An activist artist. Women during this time period were coming to terms with definitions of feminism. Slacks were still not permitted in the workplace. In the US less than 50% of women were in t...

When Sister Corita contemplated a step away, she had to completely re-imagine her identity, who she was and who she would be.  She had been a member of the Immaculate Heart of Mary for 32 years, since 1936 when she decided after high school to go into the order. Her devotion was such that she had to give her all. During her time at the Immaculate Heart of Mary Academy she thrust her whole self into teaching. Many of former students could testify as to the amount of work she piled on them as if her class was the only one they were taking. Her assignments ranged from visiting grocery stores to observe signage to helping create installations for the New York World’s Fair and a walk-thru exhibit at the World Council of Churches Assembly in Uppsala, Sweden. And, of course, there was the Mary’s Day Parade where the class printed banners, programs, etc for the ceremony. This would be a great leap. For so long she had been a teacher-nun, a sister-nun, artist-nun—what would she be if sh...

The 1960s, like 2020, was a time like no other. There was assassinations, urban unrest, Civil Right marches, a focus on racial injustice. What had been before was eroding and who knew what the “after” would look like. All of society was being shaken up. The Church was part of this; Vatican II had put church function and routines into the blender. There was a loosening up of rules such as wearing the habit, times for prayer, and how the clergy would interact with the “world.” In this turbulent time Sister Corita Kent made friends with another clergy renegade, Father Daniel Berrigan—the priest poet. He started the Ploughshares Movement during the Vietnam War of which he was an outspoken critic. Sister Corita designed many book covers for his books and in turn integrated his quotes into her art. “It seemed as though in her art the juices of the world were running over, inundating the world, bursting the rotten wineskins of semblance, rote and rot.” Daniel Berrigan 2020 has been a sl...

I learned a new word or concept this weekend: tertianship. Tertianship is essentially a year of probation, when a Jesuit examines his vocation before taking final vows. ( https://jesuitportal.bc.edu/research/documents/1966_decree10gc31/ ) It is a time to go deeper, a time to step back and assess. I discovered this word in regards to my reading on Sister Corita Kent and her “artwords.” Almost every Sunday I’ve been hopping on my bike and riding to a labyrinth located off Ridge Blvd. at a Benedictine Sisters convent. The sisters used to run St. Scholastica a school for girls that awarded an International Baccalaureate Diploma, It must have been a tremendous blow to the nuns who had dedicated their lives to teaching when the school shut down almost 10 years ago. I discovered the labyrinth during Open House Chicago . I walk the maze, trying to work out the tangle inside my head. Right now the Church and politics are so entwined as to almost be indiscernible. The current administra...

Sister Corita was influenced by such thinkers as John Cage and Buckminster Fuller whose philosophy was central to the Black Mountain College—that being an interdisciplinary approach to learning where the arts is integral. Sort of like: everything is connected. There was a strong emphasis on creativity and creating. Indeed, in her 10 Rules there are so many connections. Definitely for her everything emanated out of a spiritual core. She was doing art in a turbulent time. The world was at a tipping point—there was free love, rock’n’roll, the Vietnam War with its subsequent lies, assassinations, Civil Rights unrest, political upheaval. A bit like today. Yet there was a lack of cynicism as man y young people began to search for the truth. For Sister Corita there was the obvious and then the less obvious, the text and the subtext, the thing behind the thing, the message behind the dogma. So even though she is working with words, she is attempting to engage a viewer’s head and heart b...

  The following poster was collaboration between Sister Corita and John Gage, Bohemian-spirited composer and musician. Theirs was an unlikely friendship between two artists; one visual and the other audible. Sister Corita came up with the rules but attributed Rule 10 to John Cage. Their friendship helped to promote and popularize the rules.  Now rules were familiar to Sister Corita as she was part of a community and a religious order. She also understood the importance of practice. A religious exercise or practice propels the novice into a regular habit, forces them out of their comfort zone or nebulous world of feeling into a practical duty. But art for her was no duty, but an outward expression of an inward philosophy of being. Which included doing. These rules are not art for art’s sake, but require picking up a brush or pen, opening the laptop, the WORD file, the story where you last left off. It is work, yes, but more than that; it is life. A state of being. Rule ...

I have a group of friends who every Sunday afternoon go outside and line the street out front of our building holding up signs with the name of an unarmed Black person slain by police. Tamar Rice, Jacob Blake, Sandra Bland, Breonna Taylor. Unfortunately the list grows every week. Some of the names are easily recognizable, but some are not—but behind every name is a story, a whole life, cut short. There is power in these names. I know because of the reaction, positive and negative directed toward those holding the signs. So as much as I mentioned in my last post that I’ve never been big on artwork with words (artwords) I see now how it can move the viewer, and hopefully enable change. Much of Corita’s art was motivated by her commitment to messages and reaching people through the medium of silk screens. Sister Corita saw the intersection of art, justice, and the sacred. I speculate/wonder what she would do today with BLM, Black Lives Matter, how she would illustrate those words, b...

My work on a non-fiction manuscript side-winded into a discovery: Sister Corita Kent. Think 60s nun movies like Where Angels Go Trouble Follows! Where a young nun comes along and shakes things up. Sister Corita came up in the teaching order of the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary and taught art classes at the Immaculate Heart College for girls in Los Angeles in the 1950s and 60s. You might be familiar with her work—one of her designs graces one of the most popular stamps ever:   Now I have never been big on word or typography art—especially when it deals with religious subject matter. It comes across as pedantic. It also comes across as abstract light. I remember many church bulletin covers back in the day at my United Methodist church employed this kind of art work. This was a time when “modern” felt like it was trying too hard. It is saying “I’m hip, I’m with it” borrowing the lingo of the kids, but not the political ...