User:Mackcato/Corita Kent

Early life and education
Frances Elizabeth Kent, fifth child of Robert Vincent and Edith Genevieve, was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa in 1918. Kent's parents were artistically inclined, especially her father, and always encouraged her art. In junior high, Corita and her siblings attended Blessed Sacrament School which was partially staffed by Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. When attending junior high, Kent's art potential was noticed by several nuns. Kent graduated from Los Angeles Catholic Girls' High School in 1936. Upon entering the Roman Catholic order of IHM sisters in Los Angeles in 1936, Kent took the name Sister Mary Corita. She took classes at Otis (now Otis College of Art and Design) and Chouinard Art Institute and earned her BA from Immaculate Heart College in 1941. She earned her MA at the University of Southern California in Art History in 1951.

Death
Corita Kent was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1974. After this diagnosis, in the Back Bay of Boston, Kent confined her art to water color painting and only pursued printmaking in order to say something substantiative. The Papers of Corita revealed Kent had kept two calendars towards the end of her life. This displayed that Kent, in the midst of fighting cancer, followed a strict diet, answered and wrote letters, and wanted to live and continue to create art. She ultimately died on September 18, 1986 in Watertown Massachusetts at the age of sixty-seven. She left her copyrights and unsold works to the Immaculate Heart Community formed by the former IHM sisters in Los Angeles.