Corita Kent, the artist who designed the Boston Gas rainbow tank in Dorchester, was a "rock star" in the 1970s. But the gas tank at Commercial Point put her on the map in Boston. Kent died in 1986, but her rainbow design lives on and is the largest piece of copyrighted art in the world. Photo courtesy Corita Kent Center

By Bill Forry
Managing Editor

Back in 1971, the old Boston Gas Company commissioned celebrated pop artist Sr. Corita Kent, to design artwork for two new liquified natural gas (LNG) tanks that they had recently constructed on the shores of Dorchester Bay. Mickey Myers, a close friend and collaborator of Kent's, said that it was gas company CEO Eli Goldstone who had a moment of inspiration one day, as he sat in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the southeast expressway, not far from the Commercial Point site where the twin tanks stood.

"He was listening to the radio station's helicopter report, and they said, 'Traffic is backed up from the gas tanks,'" said Myers. "It was that reality, that typical Boston reality, that inspired him to think, 'We need to make this a symbol of hope in some way, shape or form.' The person at that time in Boston history was Corita."

What Kent came up with, according to Myers, were two volleyball-sized models, one of which carried the multi-colored image that we know so well today: the rainbow -which adorns the one remaining tank and has been re-painted twice since Kent's death in 1986.

The second model was a less colorful design, adorned with huge butterflies, Myers said.

"[Boston Gas] asked for both gas tanks to be designed for," Myers said. "[The butterfly design] was done in very few colors, purple and green, I think. The scale of it was going to really wake you up, because the other one was a much larger object."

Myers says that Boston Gas was not "convinced" about the butterfly.

"They chose to start with the rainbow. Corita was always very curious as to what happened to idea of doing the butterfly. I gather the original was lost and she didn't have a copy," Myers told the Reporter.

Remarkable stories like this one are precisely what a group of local artists and historians are eager to hear when Mickey Myers, now living in Vermont, joins several other Corita Kent experts for a special forum that has been set for Saturday, October 27. The event, co-sponsored by the Dorchester Artists Collaborative and the Dorchester Historical Society, will coincide with the annual Open Studios weekend, a three-day celebration of local visual artists.

Joyce Linehan, one of the DAC's founding members, came up with the idea and has spent the last few weeks organizing the Oct. 27 event and researching the tank's history.

"I've always loved the gas tank, although I was too young to understand the heft of it being put there and painted," says Linehan. "The tank itself neatly symbolizes the paradoxical nature of Dorchester. There's this piece of controversial public art that's embraced by a community that probably wouldn't be seen as embracing something like that."

Plus, as Linehan points out, "The fact that we have the largest piece of copyrighted art in the world here is something we should be proud of."

Myers says that Kent, a Catholic nun who was just reaching the height of her fame in the early 1970s, was justifiably proud of the tank's popularity, mainly because she got so much feedback on it from a public that had plenty of face-time with the rainbow.

"People would tell her, 'Oh, I see your rainbow every time I'm on my way to the Cape,' or 'Every time I'm on the expressway.' She loved that it was so accessible to everyone," says Myers. "It really put her on the map in Boston, where she had been living quietly for a few years. And she liked that, because she really loved the city."

A family friend of Kent's since the age of 9, Myers co-produced a public TV documentary on Kent's life and art in 1990. An artist herself, Myers was charged with supervising the re-painting of the Dorchester rainbow on two separate occasions, including 1994, when the original rainbow tank was demolished and the art was carefully re-created on the second, surviving tank.

"When it was done in 1994, it was two men up there, and me on the ground. I would drive them crazy," laughs Myers. "I'd have the original volleyball tank in my hands, looking at it with a magnifying glass and talking to them on a walkie-talkie and telling them whether it was right or not. I can't imagine the expletives that went into the Boston Harbor stratosphere.

"They did a sensational job," Myers said.

Myers was also on hand briefly while Kent herself supervised the painting of the original tank in 1971, a job that Myers said was a bit "bumpy" at first.

"In the process of it going up, the fine painters who were up there on the tank, they had misunderstood originally that it was a bunch of swishes of color. I was with her at the tank when she visited it the first time. She said, 'No, they are meant to fit together a certain way' with her signature brush stroke. For those who know her brush stroke, there was a particular style to them."

Luckily, at that stage, the paint job was still being outlined and was not a total scratch, Myers said.

Myers says she was also the one who told Corita Kent that some in Boston thought they saw the visage of Ho Chi Minh in the blue strokes of the rainbow. A well-known anti-war activist, Kent never publicly acknowledged that the North Vietnamese leader was ever a deliberate part of her design.

"I was one who called her up and said the Boston Globe says someone sees faces in your gas tank," said Myers. "She just thought it was ridiculous. I was all nervous and she wasn't the least bit nervous."

Along with Myers, who lived on Dorchester's Kenwood Street for three-and-a-half years in the 1980s, Linehan has invited Sasha Carrera, director of the Corita Kent Center in Los Angeles, to participate in the forum. Also on the panel will be a retired public affairs representative from Boston Gas to discuss the company's role; and former state Senator Paul White, who was active in the sometime contentious political and civic dialogue that surrounded the tanks' original construction.

"I understand there was some [public relations] smoke and mirrors here," says Linehan. "The gas company was trying to do something with these gas tanks that some people were frightened of. In this story there's a really compelling tale about public art and community and the way they come together. It's our obligation as the people involved in the arts in Dorchester to explore that."

The Corita Kent forum will take place on the evening of Saturday, Oct. 27 at Savin Hill Yacht Club from 7-9 p.m.
For more on Corita Kent, visit the Corita Kent Center online.