February 5-11, 2004

art

Big Bang Theorist

The art of survival: With a recent $25,000 grant, Tim Rollins will start an arts program here similar to his "Kids of Survival" project in the Bronx. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

Artist and Drexel professor Tim Rollins brings more than 20 years of urban art experience to West Philly.

by Andrew Parks

"I dated her for years." "The one with the red beehive?" "Yeah." It’s early evening in the heart of Old City. As the night chill sets in, Tim Rollins recounts his relationship with Kate Pierson, the B-52’s singer with the buoyant bouffant and drag-queen dresses. He continues to reminisce as he walks to a coffee shop amid ice, cobblestone and salt, recalling a spaghetti dinner with Iggy Pop.

Rollins retains a semblance of modesty despite this Behind the Music period of his life. Thing is, he's now a resident professor of art and education at Drexel. And his real story, well, it doesn't start in a V.I.P. room with Blondie and brown M&Ms. It begins in the South Bronx.

Struggling Latinos and blacks plus a poor white boy from rural Maine: It's a strange equation. Yet Rollins somehow struck a chord with the students of Intermediate School 52 upon his arrival in 1981. So much so that his two-week special-ed program lasted seven years, and his stay in the South Bronx became permanent. The story isn't so simple, though. As a graduate of the School of Visual Arts in New York City and apprentice of conceptual artist Joseph Kosuth, the experience was like leaving MoMA and stepping into Dangerous Minds, minus the Coolio song.

"I was so haughty and arrogant that I thought I'd be in the Whitney in the next year," Rollins says, between sips of soup inside the café. "But we all were. Ten years later we made it."

The "we" refers to the revolving cast of K.O.S., kids plucked from the bruised Bronx landscape to work with Rollins. Since the mid-'80s, his "Kids of Survival" have rendered more than 50 literary and musical themes to canvas, including War of the Worlds (international flags sliced into fragmented glass), The Scarlet Letter (a literal, ornate letter A) and Haydn's Creation (the Big Bang theory materialized). Each piece adds layers of paint over the original text or illustrations, like a piece of found art tagged with textured graffiti.

"Whenever you work with young people, people always think of flowers, bright colors, rainbows and glitter," Rollins says. "We weren't about to do that."

Instead, Rollins brought in a PBS special on Dizzy Gillespie for inspiration one day. The kids quickly funneled Gillespie's wild trumpeting into their own artistic horns, brass representing their very being. Horns are actually a recurring symbol in Rollins' series of paintings based on Franz Kafka's Amerika. Two rules govern Rollins' teaching, both of which are lifted from Amerika: Everyone is an artist and everyone is welcome.

The book provided the context for Rollins' first work in conjunction with students from Drexel and West Philadelphia high schools. Rollins was selected to lead the workshop after his speech at a College Art Association conference about "Art and Survival After 9/11." At the time, he wasn't set to be a professor. That would soon change.

The piece, a series of winding, Dr. Seuss-esque horns painted over pages of Amerika, took six days in May 2003 and was later refined by members of K.O.S. in Rollins' New York studio. It currently hangs in the dean's office, after being acquired by a school trustee.

The workshop is documented in Amerika Agape, a film by David Miller, the director of recruitment for Drexel's College of Media Arts & Design (CoMAD). From the first frame on, Rollins commands the camera, projecting himself like a preacher with fire in his gullet. Indeed, between his captivating voice, Run-D.M.C. reverend hat and head-to-toe black suit, Rollins resembles the son of a preacher man.

"I wish there were more people in the school systems that had the same level of commitment and energy that he has," Miller says. "He's the kind of guy who would do anything short of sacrificing his own life toward helping people."

"What really impressed me was the way Tim is able to relate to young people," he adds. "He is able to make this instant connection with kids, where he gets right on their level."

Rollins' talent with kids has been both a blessing and source of sorrow. Though he consciously avoids a missionary, white-male-helping-poor-black-kids approach, many have doubted Rollins' intentions.

"It's either Tim is this communist teacher who wants to make these ghetto children look great," Rollins says with a hint of hurt, "or it's Tim as an exploiter of poor children of color. "They do all the work, and he takes all the money.' One person wrote that I was a plantation owner."

K.O.S. co-director/freelance artist Rick Savinon knows Rollins better than anyone. He joined the group when he was disillusioned at 13 and developed his art and attitude alongside Rollins for 19 years.

"Some students are hard asses in the beginning, but within the first five minutes, Tim has got their attention," Savinon says. "He’s someone who’s actually in touch with the youth of America, a rare thing among teachers these days."

Savinon often travels with Rollins to workshops, including the original Amerika experiment at Drexel. He says the process behind their paintings is unmatched.

"You don’t see collaborative groups in the art world," Savinon says. "We cross borders that other people won’t."

The public can get a glimpse of Rollins’ work at Drexel’s Pearlstein Gallery through the end of the month, in an exhibit documenting his weeklong residency (along with another Drexel professor) working with Navajo children at St. Michael’s Indian School in Santa Fe. "We related Indian cosmology to the book of Genesis to Milton’s Paradise Lost, all culminating in listening to and painting on the score for The Creation by Haydn," Rollins says. "The results were "big bangs’ made on abaca paper with watercolors and collaged over the pages taken from Haydn’s score."

In addition to his regular Drexel classes, later this spring Rollins plans on instituting a K.O.S.-like program in Philadelphia, likely in West Philly. It’s funded largely by a $25,000 grant from the Bernstein Foundation.

CoMAD dean Jonathan Estrin remains optimistic about Rollins' progress.

"So far, he has been lighting up the map, turning on students and getting grant money to spread his belief and experience in the value of art," Estrin says. "Tim is a force of nature."

"Creation Mythologies" is on view through Feb. 27, Leonard Pearlstein Gallery, Drexel University, 33rd and Market sts., 215-895-2548.