Angel Abreu: My name is Angel Abreu. I grew up in the South Bronx, where K.O.S. was founded.
Rick Savinon: My name is Rick Savinon.
Robert Branch: Robert Branch. I have been a member of Tim Rollins and K.O.S. since I was 15, 16 years old.
Angel Abreu: Tim Rollins was from rural Maine, economically downtrodden as well. Tim understood we had to transcend through education. And so, he started teaching at Intermediate School 52.
Robert Branch: We'd have amazing conversations about the history of art, literature.
Angel Abreu: We’d dissect these books that resonate with us in some way. And so, for this, we used Franz Kafka's Amerika. It's book pages laid on canvas.
Robert Branch: Typically, an Amerika work would have a theme. For example, in this Amerika, you see there's a railroad track and Tim would then use that kind of visual motif as a way to teach history.
Rick Savinon: There's a chapter where the protagonist, he comes from Europe to America, thinking that the streets are paved of gold and goes through a lot of misfortunes and decides “‘I'm outta’ here. I don't want to be here in America.” And all of a sudden he hears these horns. And, so, Tim would tell us if you wanted to represent yourself as an individual, what does your horn look like?
Robert Branch: You come in after school and students would do drawings.
Rick Savinon: We had these jam sessions where we just tried to see who had the best horns. Some members would draw 50 to 100 horns, but only, maybe, two would represent them in the painting.
Robert Branch: And then we would take those drawings, putting it on an overhead projector and composing them.
Rick Savinon: It's like a jazz band where I play the guitar, somebody else is playing the drums. And the paintings deliver that voice of the group.
*Robert Branch: Tim wasn't born into privilege. But he recognized that, as a white man, he had some. And he took his privilege and he taught us that this privilege is something that also belongs to us, and that we should make work that is life affirming and powerful.