Corita Art Center at Holy See Pavilion, 60th International Exhibition of Art, Venice Biennale, 2024
As a teacher in the 1950s, Corita was an advocate for “slow looking.” By using finders on field trips, her students were able to select, isolate, and examine details within a larger visual field, rather than attempting to take in everything at once. Even today, a simple finder encourages us to identify and appreciate nuanced shapes and forms as distinct parts within a “whole” picture.
The following text and art assignment is from Corita Kent and Jan Steward’s Learning By Heart:
finders
There are, for our purposes just now, two ways of looking—slow looking and fast looking. Slow looking is best done alone. Special equipment is helpful. A magnifying glass and a camera are useful tools. Charles Eames said that a camera should be as common a tool as a pencil, not just for recording, but for framing pictures and examining the details. You needn’t have film in the camera for it to be a helpful implement for learning how to look and see. The lens frames a section, allowing us to put all our attention on that special area.
Another tool for looking is a finder. This is a device which does the same thing as the camera lens or viewfinder. It helps take things out of context, allows us to see for the sake of seeing, and enhances our quick-looking and decision-making skills.
assignment
Take your finder to the market, the theater, park, any gathering place where there is a lot to see. Look at the world through it for half an hour. The shapes you see there might become paintings you want to make. View the facade of the nearest building through the finder and isolate ten details to draw on the spot. (It is very dangerous to draw from memory. We remember inaccurately and rarely can retain the details).
You can learn more about Corita Kent's contribution to the Holy See Pavilion, 60th International Exhibition of Art, Venice Biennale, 2024, at Corita Art Center's guide on the Bloomberg Connects app Store or Google Play:
