Since the early 1980’s Tim Rollins and K.O.S. have engaged in a process of creative collaboration where change and chance are the rewards for embracing the connection between art, literature, religion, and politics. While teaching at Intermediate School #52 in the South Bronx in 1984 Rollins started an after school art and literacy program for students the school deemed unteachable. Bringing together diverse elements of his background and personal experience from the structure of choir practices in the Baptist Church that he still participates in, to the free-thinking challenges to authority embodied in the artist collective Group Material that he co-founded, Rollins approached teaching as a process of drawing out ideas in an engaged yet disciplined approach.
Rollins refused to patronize his students and instead encouraged them to explore classical literature and connect the content to their own experience. During one exercise Rollins instructed his students to make spontaneous drawings while he read aloud from George Orwell’s book 1984. One of the students misunderstood the instruction and began to draw directly onto the pages of his copy of the book. This accident excited the rest of the class, opened up creative possibilities, and literally drew the students into the text with an enthusiasm that previously seemed impossible.
The students in the class soon named themselves K.O.S. for Kids of Survival to acknowledge the skills they had acquired. The link between literature and art has remained a constant for Rollins and K.O.S. as the group has changed and evolved over the years. Many members of K.O.S. have gone on to pursue studies in fine arts and education while others including Nelson (Rick) Savinon continue to participate in the ongoing activities and creation of new work in their New York studio and at workshops and master classes around the world.
During the collaborative process of creating new work in master classes Rollins provides inspiration, structure, and enthusiasm. While listening to readings of selected literature or historic readings class participants are instructed to begin drawing institutively. As the class progresses and the momentum builds as members are challenged with questions like “Is there one color that represents humanity?” the obvious and often cliché drawings move towards more abstract and mysterious forms. In one class this process produced the triangular form and blood red color that formed the painting I See the Promised Land representing King’s spiritual belief that life is a great triangle with depth, breadth, and transcendent light..
In another painting, Letter from a Birmingham Jail, the class started with a blank canvas approximately the size of Dr. King’s cell in Birmingham where he wrote the letter that inspired the piece. Each student created their own original shade of black that were painted in stripes representing the bars of the cell over a ground of book pages adhered to the canvas.
To produce The Red Badge of Courage, inspired by Stephen Crane’s novel of the same name, students draw and paint directly on pages torn from a first edition copy of the novel. Representations of wounds are drawn on the pages symbolizing “the red sickness of battle” that Crane describes as the price of being able to look forward to peace. Struggle and redemption flow through the works inspired by Crane and King and help ground the unique collaborations of Tim Rollins and K.O.S. with a respect for the past and greater promise for the future.