There is Only One Man in the World 1967

Corita Kent made this print with bold color and text, and it looks like she did it with such immediacy. I can imagine her layering these stencils, one after the other, and seeing how the text and colors shift the ground. The words of Carl Sandburg dance across the surface, each painted phrase contributing to a collective message, speaking to the individual and the universal. I love how the blue stripes meander like a slow river, contrasting with the sharp diagonal lines of the text. It's like she's thinking about how we read and how we see, all at the same time. The whole thing feels so uplifting, like a street mural. Kent was always experimenting with ways to bring poetry and activism together through art. It reminds me of the work of Sister Mary, also an artist who used text in painting, or even Barbara Kruger. It is an ongoing conversation, isn’t it?