Having just published a book on the late 1960s, and having driven past the famed Corita Kent gas tanks on route 93 South of Boston hundreds of times, I wondered, on entering the wonderful new exhibit “Corita Kent and the Language of Pop” at the Harvard Fogg Museum how I could possibly have missed Kent’s amazing presence in the Pop Art scene.

The show juxtaposes some 60 works by Kent–who was born in 1918 and became a nun in 1936–with approximately the same number of works by  known pop figures such as Andy Warhol,  Jim Dine,  Edward Ruscha, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Indiana, and others.  It examines Kent’s screen prints; that 1971 bold “rainbow swash” design for the Boston Gas tank, as well as films, books, and other works.

But in a talk after the September 3 opening, Susan Dackerman, consultative curator of prints at the Harvard Art Museums, said that she herself had  not known much about Kent’s  work until she met another curator’s sister–Mary Anne Karia (née Mikulka), a former student of Kent’s at Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles, and a long-time friend of Kent’s. Mikulka showed Dackerman the notes, papers and prints saved from her student and later days. That introduction, in 2010, turned into a multi-year research project in which a team of Harvard art historians and graduate students began to place Kent–who left the convent and moved to Boston in 1968– in the artistic and cultural movements of her time.

The exhibition explores how Kent’s work both responded to and advanced the concerns of Vatican II, a movement to modernize the Catholic Church and make it more relevant to contemporary society. The church advocated conducting the Mass in English. Kent, like her pop art contemporaries, simultaneously turned to vernacular texts for inclusion in her vibrant prints, drawing from such colloquial sources as product slogans, street signs, and Beatles lyrics. Vatican II also  advocated having priests turning to face their congregants–a theme shown in the reversals of words in various Kent prints which require viewers to commune or relate to the work in new ways, as pointed out by Elizabeth Cary Agassiz Professor of the Humanities. While Kent questioned the authority of the Church, she also took up  the church’s fight against poverty as an artistic theme. 

By bringing “Wonder Bread” into her work,  according to American studies graduate student Eva Payne Kent, Kent pointed out the need for food and  the leavening qualities of bread–as well as the symbolism of the communion wafer, and the sharing of bread as a means of communion among everyday people.

Kent thus emphasized the egalitarian rather than the authoritarian, and, unlike the implied messages of recognized pop artists,  her messages made her art not purely critique of the commercial world but brought out the importance of quotidian life.

In 1968, a year after she was featured as the new nun on cover of Newsweek Magazine, Kent left the convent and her teaching position and moved to Boston.

At this point, as sixties political protests escalated, Kent began to include news photo images of war, racial struggles, political figures in her prints– perhaps relying less on words to express emotion.  I found these works less vivid–but they packed a punch-. I was especially taken by an anti-war print that included a photo of Daniel and PHilip Berrigan, friends of hers who were priests and antiwar activists with whom I interacted at Cornell and later, during the Trial of the Harrisburg 8.

Asked in Q&A why Kent had not been considered important to the Pop Art, Dackerman pointed out that a center of the movement had been the Ferris Art Gallery, in Los Angeles–and that the recognized pop artists were often referred to as the “Ferris Studs.”  Not only was she a woman, Dackerman said, but she was, of all things “a nun.”. Another speaker mentioned that unlike her male counterparts, Kent, then called “Sister Mary Corita,” might have been considered “too cheery” and positive about the Church, possibilities for communion, and the egalitarian nature of the commercial world.

All in all–the show is a must-see for anyone interested in the 1960s, pop art, female artists or the relationship of art, religion, politics and social change.,

Anita M. Harris
Anita Harris is the author of Ithaca Diaries, Coming of Age in the 1960s and of Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity.
Print and e-versions of both books are available on Amazon or Kindle.
New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning PR and marketing firm in Cambridge, MA.

Photo: Anita M. Harris

I was privileged to  preview  the stunning new Whitney Museum in New York City, which has moved from its Marcel Breuer-designed building on Madison Avenue at 78th Street to 99 Gansevoort St. Scheduled to open to the public on May 1, the  225,000 sq.ft. glass-and steel building designed by architect Renzo Piano is located in the old meat packing district, a stone’s throw from the Hudson River.

It has already attracted a  number of restaurants and upscale  shops, says friend and New York arts writer Terry Trucco.

Trucco was wowed by the current exhibit–“America is Hard to See”– which is comprised of more than 400 works from the Whitney’s own collection (now numbering 22,000 works by some 3,000 artists). 

The exhibit spans the entire building, occupying both interior and exterior spaces. It’s organized into a series of 23 “chapters”, each titled after an individual work.

It begins on the glass-enclosed first floor, with an introduction to the Whitney’s early history. (The museum was founded by sculptor and arts patron Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney in 1931.)  The exhibit then moves to the eighth floor, and proceeds down to the 5th and, finally to the third, with work from a different period on each floor.

According to a Whitney brochure: The exhibition reexamines the history of art in the United States from 1900 to the present. It elaborates the themes, ideas, beliefs and passions that have galvanized American artists in their struggle to work within and against established conventions, often directly engaging their political and social contexts. Numerous pieces that have rarely, if ever, been shown appear alongside beloved icons in a conscious attempt to unsettle assumptions about the American art canon.

The title, “America Is Hard to See,”  comes from a Robert Frost Poem and a political documentary by Emile de Antonio.The show constitutes “a kind of collective memory–representing a range of individual sometimes conflicting attitudes toward what American art might be or mean or do at any given moment.”

I very-much liked the numerous “surprises” in the show: elevators opening onto vibrant wallways;

statues looking at paintings; 

guards willing to pose near sculpture of guards;

whimsical works amidst the profound,

and elevator interiors that are commissioned artworks by the late Richard Artschwager.

But I was blown away by the architectural and design elements of the structure–making the museum itself a work of art.

Inside,  I loved the airy, expansive galleries,

creative placement of work,

and

from windows, views of the Hudson river, New Jersey and New York city scapes.

Looking down–installations of outdoor galleries by artists such as Mary Hellman.

And, on the the outside–looking up– wonderful shapes, against the sky.

Throughout, there was an air of festivity, with helpful guards who clearly enjoyed their new workspace, and in the first floor cafe,  staffers  taking part in a celebration of their own.

The Whitney opens to the public on May 1. “America is Hard to See” runs through September 27, 2015.

–Anita M. Harris

Anita M Harris, a writer and communications consultant based in Cambridge, MA, reported on the arts and other topics for national public television. Currently, she is managing director of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning public relations firm. She is also the author of Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity, and Ithaca Diaries, (Cambridge Common Press, 2014) .

c.  Anita M. Harris 2015

Children’s author, fellow Cornell alum and friend Irene Smalls, who lives in Boston, writes:

Sometime yesterday someone scrawled on the side of my house “Every nigger is a star.”  I was stunned.  I have lived in my neighbohood in downtown Boston for 38 years without incident.  Now, someone is perpetrating a silent assault against me personally and my property  with the “n word.”  I don’t know if it was a prank or a threat. Either way I get a chill entering my front door each day now.  I feel violated and ignored at the same time.  Who ever did this does not know I write books for all children or that I volunteer in the community.  I am raising money to demolish the offensive fence and put security cameras around my property. I am preparing.  My hope is this will never happen again but I am getting ready in case this racist message was real.   I will not be forced out of my neighborhood by hoods or threat of harm.

Please help Irene fund her “go fund me”  campaign to replace the fence?

http://www.gofundme.com/rq857g  .
Thanks!

–Anita M. Harris

Anita Harris is a writer and communications consultant based in Cambridge, MA. Her new book, Ithaca Diaries, was published earlier this year by Cambridge Common Press. A new edition of Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity came out in 2014. 

Anita M. Harris

An aspiring author asks if she needs a Website for her new book.

My answer is yes:.the more exposure you can get on the Web the better–so that people searching for you or your topic can find you. But building a website is not for the faint of heart.

Having researched several site-building platforms, I decided to use WordPress to  build this site and  sites for my books,  Ithaca Diaries and Broken Patterns.

I chose WordPress because it seemed to be the simplest option, and you  can build a site a WordPress.com for free.   But I have to say  there was  quite a learning curve. To start with, the free templates are not at all intuitive (nor are the paid ones).

Then I had to decide if I would  pay for my own domain (web address). That is,   a free WordPress site  for New Cambridge Observer would be posted on WordPress.com and have the address  http://newcambridgeobserver.wordpress.com. I opted to pay approximately $12 to purchase the domain name  “New Cambridge Observer,” so that it could have the simpler address  https://newcambridgeobserver.com.  Then, I had to decide if I would pay for hosting at wordpress.com (simple, but limited options to sell from a site there,)  or pay to have it hosted on the server of a company like Godaddy, com..   I chose the latter because it allows more versatility and hosts my multiple sites for approximately $100 a year.

But no matter which building or hosting option you choose,: be aware that once your site or blog is launched, it takes a lot of time and energy to get readers to go there.  You need to understand the ever changing methods of search engine optimization and be very active on social media. And  once you get readers to the site, it’s a challenge to get them to comment or interact.  (To my readers–what gives?)

So, if you want to do it yourself, I’d advise a simple site optimized for SEO, combined with an intense social media plan. . If your goal is to build a community, you should put time, energy and $ into a Web site. If your goal is to sell books, I’d advise  a small site or blog (like this one–I used a free template called “Magazine Basic”).  It’s relatively easy to post   important information and links  that will take readers to Amazon, Kobo or other sites for stores where your books are available. You should also build an author site on Amazon–that’s  easy compared with building a Web site– but you still need to get people to go there.

Good luck!

–Anita M. Harris
Author, Ithaca Diaries, Coming of Age in the 1960s, Cambridge Common Press, 2015)  Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity (Cambridge Common Press, 2014)

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, a marketing and PR firm based in Cambridge, MA.

HI! Apologies for my long absence…but am pleased to report that an advance edition of Ithaca Diaries, my new book about college in the 1960s, is (at long last)  available on Amazon–in paperbook and Kindle editions.

The official launch won’t take place for another few weeks, but with the help of my sister, Laura Harris Hirsch and friend Stacy Kaufman, I managed to finish the index and formatting in time for the release of a fabulous writeup in the Cornell University Ezra  Magazine, which came out Dec. 23.

Because the writeup  is not an official “review,” I’m not supposed to quote from it, so suffice it  to say that Ezra’s H. Roger Segelken starts out–“Whenever they went to college, most everyone thinks their undergraduate years were a noteworthy epoch of personal and societal transformation. Not everyone was at Cornell between 1966 and 1970, though, and even fewer kept detailed, heartfelt journals during that turbulent period.”  And, if you’d like,  you can read the rest.

I’m hoping to officially launch the book in mid-January, in time for Cornell’s Boston Sesquicentennial celebration, and am now seeking real reviews (and readers!)

Will be sending autographed copies to Kickstarter supporters early next week–as soon as books arrive on  my doorstep.

You can find more information on the Ithaca Diaries website  and buy the paperback or Kindle edition at  Amazon. The Cornell Store will be carrying the paperback in the near future.

Thanks!

—Anita M. Harris

Anita M. Harris is the author of Ithaca Diaries and Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity. 

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, the award-winning marketing and PR firm Harris  founded in 1998.

The Cambridge Art Association’s 70TH exhibition year, opened Friday, September 12, with the 70th Fall Salon, CAA announced in a press release, yesterday.

The salon  runs through September 26, 2014, in both the Kathryn Schultz Gallery (25 R Lowell St)   and
University Place Galleries (125 Mt. Auburn St). Awards were presented on Friday, September 12.

CAA Event Calendar

The opening  honored the memory of longtime member and supporter Mary Schein, whose husband, Edgar Schein, has provided longtime sponsorship and support of the Fall Salon. The 70th Fall
Salon features artwork in a range of media from 144 Cambridge Art Association Artist Members.

Of the prizewinners, who were each awarded $250, Edgar Shein writes:
Jim Kociuba (Cambridge, MA) – November Rain, oil on canvas
This painting captures the style, color and content of what I always thought Mary appreciated—gentle
colors, a simple natural beautiful theme of the receding stream, and a softness of style we associated with some of the paintings of Vuillard and Redon both of whom Mary loved. I have to admit after looking them up on Google that much of their work was anything but gentle and soft, but when they did achieve it, it had a special quality that always attracted us greatly.

Susan Burgess (Cambridge, MA) – Maine Retreat, oil on canvas
This painting is a wonderful reminder of the summers Mary and I spent in Maine. We divided our time
between Bethel, where I worked, and the ocean that she loved, having grown up in Carmel, California. The two coasts are totally different, with the young California coast plunging steeply into the sea, while the geologically much older Maine coast gently eases into the ocean as this painting so elegantly shows. Our favorite places were Boothbay Harbor and Rockland where we spent several summers at the grand old Samoset Hotel. The peaceful and calming and eternal vista of this painting could be seen over and over again all along the coast.

Upcoming exhibits: 

• Time Travelers – a small group show with work by Stephen Martin, Conny Goelz-Schmitt, and Lorraine Sullivan October 2–30, 2014. Opening reception, Thursday, October 2, 6-8pm at Kathryn Schultz Gallery
• 70th Members Prize Show, juried by Al Miner (Assistant Curator of Contemporary Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)October 10 – November 15, 2014. Opening reception: Friday, October 10, 6-8pm at University Place Gallery
• Motion Envisioned – a small group show with work by Bea Grayson, Bob Hesse, and Ruth LieberherrNovember 4-29, 2014. Opening reception, Saturday, November 15, 1-3pm at Kathryn Schultz Gallery
• PLATINUM – Northeast Open Show, juried by Alise Upitis (Assistant Curator, MIT List Visual Art Center)December 4, 2014 – January 16, 2015. Opening reception Friday, December 5, 6-8pm at the Kathryn Schultz Gallery and University Place Gallery.

–Anita M. Harris
New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group, an award-winning PR and marketing firm based in Kendall Square, Cambridge, MA. 

Anita Harris is a communications consultant and the author of Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Femninine Identity (2014) and the forthcoming Ithaca Diaries, Coming of Age in the 1960s. (Spring, 2015).

Boston children’s book author Irene Smalls has joined forces with artist/illustrator Cathy Ann Johnson and publicist Ayanna Najuma to establish 2GoGlobal Marketing--an agency to promote independent authors and small publishers at the Frankfurt International Book Fair, in October of 2014.

Frankfurt, the world’s oldest and largest book fair, is attended by some 300,000 publishers, buyers and authors seeking to purchase and sell international rights to books. Approximately 120 countries are represented, at some 1750 booths.

Typically, independent authors and publishers are not represented in Frankfurt.

But 2GoGlobalMarketing will exhibit books in a Frankfurt Book Fair front row booth, “hand sell” and actively search for international sales opportunities for select books, “ according to Smalls.

Smalls, an award-winning author who writes primarily for “diverse” or minority children, was told by her publishers there was “no interest” in her books internationally. But she found that was not true.  “Publishers from Lebanon and China expressed interest in my titles. I would not have known that without pursuing international rights sales on my own.”

According to Johnson: “Authors and illustrators must be entrepreneurs.  Being represented in Frankfurt is the next step in developing our brands and literary businesses.”

Najuma, who will direct 2GoGlobalMarketing’s promotion at the show, said: “Many representatives merely place books on a shelf in a booth. 2GOGlobalMarketing will showcase individual books and seek out buyers at events and venues throughout the show.”

2GoGLOBALMarketing is currently accepting a small number of select titles to showcase, for a $500 fee.  Authors  and small publishers may apply through August 31, 2014 via the 2GoGLOBAL website www.frankfurt2014.com.

Authors represented by 2GoGLOBAL  are also welcome to hold book signings at the 2GoGlobalMarketing booth.

–Anita M. Harris
Anita Harris is the author of Broken Patterns, Professional Women and the Quest for a New Feminine Identity (2014) and Ithaca Diaries (forthcoming, 2015).

New Cambridge Observer is a publication of the Harris Communications Group--an award-winning PR and marketing firm based in Cambridge, MA.