Originally, Sister Mary Corita Kent produced
this version of "hope" (80-10) to help raise funds for the legal defense of
the Plowshares Eight. Now, to support the Thomas Merton Center, we are using
Molly Rush's own copy, with permission from the Corita Art Center, and the
help of a local silkscreen professional to make this Twentieth Anniversary
Edition.
This quality, 16" x 20", hand pulled,
silkscreen reproduction faithfully presents green foliage and a deep, spring
lilac background suggesting white crocuses in bloom. Unmistakably Corita.
The print reads in bold script, "we are filled with hope". For this
version Corita added the dedication: "for our world and for our children,
the Plowshares Eight. Daniel Berrigan, Philip Berrigan, Dean Hammer, Father
Carl Kabat, Elmer Maas, Anne Montgomery, Molly Rush, John Schuchardt."
Ordering Information: A significant
portion of the profit will be donated to support the work of the Thomas Merton
Center! The cost of this serigraph reproduction of "hope" (80-10) has been
set at a special price of $65 (+ $5 shipping and 7% tax
Pennsylvania residents only) for visitors
of the Merton Center webpage.
Total cost: $70.00 for outside Pennsylvania; $76.50
Pennsylvania residents
Call Don Polito at (412) 571-1034 to place an order. You can also
mail your check to Polito Productions, 3930 Frederick St., Pittsburgh, PA
15234.
Images (c) Corita Art Center
Immaculate Heart Community, Los Angeles, CA. All rights reserved.
hope by Corita, 1980, reproduced with permission of The Corita Art
Center, Immaculate Heart Community, Los Angeles, CA
All rights reserved. by Polito Productions, Hope Filled Art, 3930
Frederick St., Pittsburgh, PA 15234
for the Thomas Merton Center, 5125 Penn Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15224
"We are Filled with Hope"
Sister Corita Kent's Message is Still Alive
by Molly Rush
When Don Polito approached me with the idea
of raising funds for the Thomas Merton Center with a limited edition
re-print of Sister Corita Kent's beautiful serigraph, I was thrilled. I
knew that it would be a striking way to commemorate the 20th anniversary of
the Plowshares Eight direct action at General Electric's King of Prussia
Plant
That action was, for me and the seven others
who hammered and poured blood on Mark 12A warheads being produced under
cover of secrecy at that plant, a sign that hope could flicker even in the
face of the real threat of nuclear holocaust.
Corita Kent took that flicker and caused it
to bloom in a splash of purple and white, a radiant burst of hope. She
added our names to make the connection, to say: denting a warhead is not
destruction, but to let it be, to threaten all life with unimaginable
devastation, is to accept despair.
It is a huge danger to pretend that awful things do
not happen.
But you need enough hope to keep you going.
I am trying to make hope.
Flowers grow out of darkness.
Sister Mary Corita Kent
So much has changed since 1980. The Soviet
Union as enemy is no more. We have managed to make it to a new millennium
without a nuclear war or an accidental firing of the death machine. The
leaders, once locked into endless threats, are free to let go. Surely when
even the generals call for abolition of nuclear bombs, we need not accept
their inevitability.
We'd prefer to forget the close calls that
made us fear for our children's lives. We'd rather not remember that the
weapons are still around, still on hair-trigger alert as the nations who
follow our lead continue to proliferate the bombs.
Philip Berrigan, one of the original
Plowshares Eight, is one of dozens who continue to be jailed for resisting,
for demanding that swords be replaced by plowshares. A voice from the
past? I think not. Rather, a voice from our future, raised in hope.
Corita Kent, who died in 1986, added her
voice to ours during the trial in the early 1980s, when she produced the
first "Plowshares" edition of We are filled with hope. They
were purchased by friends and supporters to help raise funds for our legal
defense. Corita was an internationally known artist who taught at
Immaculate Heart College in Los Angeles. Her work dramatically fused
social, political, religious and aesthetic concerns.
That is why Don Polito's offer seemed so
appropriate to me - not just as a reminder of the need for hope back then -
but the need for continuing struggles for peace and justice, and so to keep
alive that spirit of hope.
If you haven't seen the beautiful serigraph
which Corita produced and which Don so lovingly re-created, with permission
from Sister Corita's Immaculate Heart Community, I urge you to drop by the
Merton Center. It is inscribed, "We are filled with hope for our world
and for our children," and adds, "The Plowshares Eight: Daniel
Berrigan, Philip Berrigan, Dean Hammer, Father Carl Kabat, Elmer Maas, Anne
Montgomery, Molly Rush, and John Schuchardt."
