Studio K.O.S. Post-Workshop Dialogue

Art Resources Transfer and the Walker Art Center present a conversation with Studio K.O.S.

Following workshops with local teens and with teachers, librarians, and teaching artists across the Twin Cities, Studio K.O.S. join Wendy Tronrud and Nisa Mackie for a discussion on their evolving pedagogical approach to collaborative art-making.

Reflecting on experiences of their recent workshops, the group will unpack their 30+ year process including the significance of Ralph Ellison’s text Invisible Man, the relationship between reading and making, and the intersections of art and social justice.

Insisting on art-making as a model of literacy that advances social justice, Studio K.O.S. is an extraordinary experiment in collaborative pedagogy with actual transformative impact. The group’s current members—Angel Abreu, Jorge Abreu, Robert Branch, and Rick Savinon—continue and reimagine the collective practice founded by Tim Rollins in the early 1980s, which merged the classroom and art studio to produce artworks developed through shared readings of literary classics. Following the passing of Rollins in 2017, the group continues to evolve.

“To dare to make history when you are young, when you are a minority, when you are working, or nonworking class, when you are voiceless in society, takes courage. Where we came from, just surviving is ‘making history.’ So many others, in the same situations, have not survived, physically, psychologically, spiritually, or socially. We were making our own history. We weren’t going to accept history as something given to us.” —Tim Rollins

Studio K.O.S. (Kids of Survival) is the 2020 A.R.T.’s Distribution to Underserved Communities Library Program Honoree. A.R.T. will celebrate Studio K.O.S. by distributing over 25,000 free art books to 625 public libraries, schools, and prisons in the group’s name. In partnership with the Walker Art Center, and following these workshops and public dialogue, Studio K.O.S. will co-create the fifth installment of A.R.T.’s Reading Resources teaching guides.

Wendy Tronrud is the Associate Director of Teaching Programs at the Bard Prison Initiative and a former high school teacher in New York. She has worked as an Education Consultant for A.R.T. for the past four years, where she co-developed Reading Resources.

Nisa Mackie is the Head of Public Engagement, Learning, and Impact at the Walker.

Art Resources Transfer (A.R.T.) is a nonprofit organization committed to documenting and disseminating artists’ voices and work to the broadest possible publics. Its three programs, A.R.T. Press, the D.U.C., and Reading Resources, activate the key components of the printed book—publication, distribution, education, and spaces of reading—to create more egalitarian access to the arts and literacy.

Target Free Thursday Nights are sponsored by Target.