Project information Tim Rollins & K.O.S.

The New York-based collaborative Tim Rollins + K.O.S. creates works of art that combine literary texts and painted images. Rollins founded K.O.S. (kids of survival) in 1982. This collective art practice uses texts that the group studies as a basis for art. Typically, actual pages from literary classics are laid on canvas to form a ground and then over painted with imagery that embodies motifs from the text.

At the Spencer Museum of Art, the students and Rollins joined in an evolving collaboration focusing on writer Langston Hughes and the poem "A Dream Deferred" in after-school workshops. The process involved tutorials, discussion, slide shows, historical and background information to put the artist and his times in context, music of the era, group consensus, and extensive preparatory drawings.

Rollins and the students unveiled their collaborative work at a public celebration, Saturday, February 9. Museum visitors also enjoyed hip-hop music inspired by the writings of Hughes and performed by local group "Sounds Good."

Tim Rollins lectured on "Art and the Dream Deferred," the following day, Sunday, February 10, in the Spencer Museum Auditorium. Both events were free and open to the public.

The MetLife Foundation awarded the Spencer Museum one of 17 Museum Connections grants to fund the project. The art is exhibited during regular gallery hours through May 26, 2002.

Tim Rollins+ K.O.S.: The Langston Hughes Project is a component of the community-wide centennial celebration of Langston Hughes, who lived in Lawrence for 12 years as a child. Find complete information at www.kuce.org/hughes

Tim Rollins and K.O.S. (Kids of Survival) have worked collaboratively since 1982, when Rollins took a teaching job in the South Bronx to create a special course in art for students with educational and emotional disabilities. Since then, Rollins and his students across the country and around the world have created works of art based on literary texts, often combining the actual text pages with painted images laid down on a canvas ground. Well-known subjects for his group's work include Herman Melville's Moby Dick and Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Tim Rollins looks for a diverse group of students, often finding those who dislike school but love art. Through their intense interaction, Rollins and his collaborators create remarkable works of artistic and social significance. Rollins has succeeded in changing young people's lives and the communities in which they live through the power of intense dialogue with literary texts in order to create enduring and meaningful works of art.

Tim Rollins Biography
Rollins was born in Pittsfield, Maine, in 1955. A conceptual artist who co-founded the artists' collective Group Material, he was also a special ed teacher in public school 52 in the South Bronx. He discovered that his students responded to art when taught his way, not as it is usually taught in public schools. He established the Art of Knowledge Workshops for students with learning disabilities and then K.O.S., which stands for "Kids of Survival," the name the students chose for themselves.