“On my first day of school, all the stereotypical things you would expect from a really bad school were prevalent: paper thrown all over the halls, kids running all over the place,” said Abreu. “But my seventh period was art class, and I was really excited for that. As we were filing into room 318, there was a collective hush, and it was obvious that whoever we were seeing on the other side of the door was well-respected.”
The person on the other side of the door was Tim Rollins, a “twenty-five year old spitfire” (as Abreu put it) in a three piece suit who would become one of Abreu’s mentors. On that first day of class, Mr. Rollins handed each student a fifty question multiple choice test with questions like “out of these four artists, which one was not a Cubist?” and “what year was the first Surrealist manifesto written?”
After each student handed in their test, Rollins stood at the front of the room and said, “This is the exact midterm test that I’m going to give you. And I can guarantee that you all will get As.”
Sitting there, Abreu described how “it hit [him] like a lightning bolt: maybe this was where [he] belonged all along.” This was somewhere where he could be fully dedicated to art.
That fall, Abreu would join an afterschool program run by Rollins that would one day create Tim Rollins and Kids of Survival (KOS), one of the longest running artist collectives in the United States with pieces in over 120 museums around the world.
KOS was a collective of young artists who used literature in their artworks. Their belief was that when one is a member of an underprivileged group, simply surviving is making history as so many people in those groups do not. To dare to do more to survive, to make art, takes courage. They believed in not accepting history; they would defy it and make it their own.
Abreu uses these mantras in his own work and life. He believes that “[the] characters that we read about, they’re suspended in timelessness. And for me they’re just ready to be plucked and used and be related to in ways not anticipated by the author. And that’s the ultimate metaphor for what art is. When it can transcend generations, transcends race, socioeconomics, gender, this is what it’s about.’”
When Tim Rollins passed in 2017, KOS transformed into the organization Studio KOS. Under the leadership of Abreu and other members of the art collective, the group now conducts workshops around the country with youth and educators.
Abreu continued his work with KOS throughout his time as a student at Deerfield Academy.
In his eighth grade year, Abreu first became connected with Deerfield Academy when an admissions employee who was friends with his guidance counselor visited IS 52 to interview a handful of students. He explained, “I really had no intention of going to Deerfield. I thought, ‘You know what, I’ll apply because everyone wants me to, but I’m going to stay and go to school in New York City.’ As it turns out, obviously I didn’t.”
During his freshman year at Deerfield, Abreu became the youngest artist to have a painting acquired by and be on the artist’s roster of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He was only 14 when the KOS work Amerika VIII was obtained by the prestigious institution.
But despite his accomplishments, Abreu kept his work with KOS quiet. He explained that he was worried that “it felt like I was boasting, like maybe it’s not something I should be talking about.” He also mentioned that he couldn’t fully consider the scope of his activities in the moment. “Sometimes you can’t make sense of these extraordinary things until you have hindsight, until you have some experience and you can figure out woah, like this is pretty fantastic,” he explained.
Abreu didn’t even tell Visual Arts Teacher David Dickinson about KOS. Dickinson found out about the group on his own. Abreu explained, “The Washington Post ended up doing a huge article on [Tim Rollins and KOS] and we were in the front section of the arts section. So I got back to campus my senior year and Mr. Dickinson showed me the article…I was kind of speechless at the time.”
He added, “I think it came as a surprise because I spent a lot of time in those studios, I spent a lot of time talking to him and getting advice on how to go about making work. And for me not to share that with him, I think he was a little hurt.”
The close relationship with his Deerfield teachers is just one reason Abreu decided to come back as the 2020-21 Wilson Fellow. He explained, “[I’ve been] thinking about how we are all the ultimate art works, that you’ve got to curate your own experiences, your own cultural experiences, and all that manifests in certain ways that you may not quite understand.”
The unique challenges that he faces as a teacher during COVID-19 also fascinate him. “I would not be honest if I said I wouldn’t prefer to be here under normal circumstances, but I’m making the best of it. If anything, it’s making it necessary for new avenues of instruction which will augment the pedagogy going forward,” he said.
In addition, he emphasizes how proud he is of the amazing student body and their work, especially their dedication to learning and the school community during the pandemic.
Abreu’s favorite part of the Deerfield community is its diversity. He said, “There is social unrest in the rest of the country and we’re certainly not immune to that here, but our close-knit community allows for discourse across many social lines. The work continues, but the answers rely on communities of future leaders like these. Students here need to believe and relish in that.”
He also believes that it is important for students to take part in as many opportunities as possible, practice their interests daily even through periods of stagnation, collaborate with others and their experiences to gain a more global worldview, be honest with constructive criticism instead of being condescending, and remember that they are all ultimate artworks.
Arts Teacher Angel Abreu ’92 was able to avoid attending Intermediate School 52, the middle school only three blocks away from his Bronx apartment, for two years. Instead, he took two buses to get across the city to one of the first charter schools in the South Bronx. But in 1986, when Abreu was twelve, he had no choice but to attend I.S. 52, a school he considered one of the worst schools in the city.
“On my first day of school, all the stereotypical things you would expect from a really bad school were prevalent: paper thrown all over the halls, kids running all over the place,” said Abreu. “But my seventh period was art class, and I was really excited for that. As we were filing into room 318, there was a collective hush, and it was obvious that whoever we were seeing on the other side of the door was well-respected.”
The person on the other side of the door was Tim Rollins, a “twenty-five year old spitfire” (as Abreu put it) in a three piece suit who would become one of Abreu’s mentors. On that first day of class, Mr. Rollins handed each student a fifty question multiple choice test with questions like “out of these four artists, which one was not a Cubist?” and “what year was the first Surrealist manifesto written?”
After each student handed in their test, Rollins stood at the front of the room and said, “This is the exact midterm test that I’m going to give you. And I can guarantee that you all will get As.”
Sitting there, Abreu described how “it hit [him] like a lightning bolt: maybe this was where [he] belonged all along.” This was somewhere where he could be fully dedicated to art.
That fall, Abreu would join an afterschool program run by Rollins that would one day create Tim Rollins and Kids of Survival (KOS), one of the longest running artist collectives in the United States with pieces in over 120 museums around the world.
KOS was a collective of young artists who used literature in their artworks. Their belief was that when one is a member of an underprivileged group, simply surviving is making history as so many people in those groups do not. To dare to do more to survive, to make art, takes courage. They believed in not accepting history; they would defy it and make it their own.
Abreu uses these mantras in his own work and life. He believes that “[the] characters that we read about, they’re suspended in timelessness. And for me they’re just ready to be plucked and used and be related to in ways not anticipated by the author. And that’s the ultimate metaphor for what art is. When it can transcend generations, transcends race, socioeconomics, gender, this is what it’s about.’”
When Tim Rollins passed in 2017, KOS transformed into the organization Studio KOS. Under the leadership of Abreu and other members of the art collective, the group now conducts workshops around the country with youth and educators.
Abreu continued his work with KOS throughout his time as a student at Deerfield Academy.
In his eighth grade year, Abreu first became connected with Deerfield Academy when an admissions employee who was friends with his guidance counselor visited IS 52 to interview a handful of students. He explained, “I really had no intention of going to Deerfield. I thought, ‘You know what, I’ll apply because everyone wants me to, but I’m going to stay and go to school in New York City.’ As it turns out, obviously I didn’t.”
During his freshman year at Deerfield, Abreu became the youngest artist to have a painting acquired by and be on the artist’s roster of the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. He was only 14 when the KOS work Amerika VIII was obtained by the prestigious institution.
But despite his accomplishments, Abreu kept his work with KOS quiet. He explained that he was worried that “it felt like I was boasting, like maybe it’s not something I should be talking about.” He also mentioned that he couldn’t fully consider the scope of his activities in the moment. “Sometimes you can’t make sense of these extraordinary things until you have hindsight, until you have some experience and you can figure out woah, like this is pretty fantastic,” he explained.
Abreu didn’t even tell Visual Arts Teacher David Dickinson about KOS. Dickinson found out about the group on his own. Abreu explained, “The Washington Post ended up doing a huge article on [Tim Rollins and KOS] and we were in the front section of the arts section. So I got back to campus my senior year and Mr. Dickinson showed me the article…I was kind of speechless at the time.”
He added, “I think it came as a surprise because I spent a lot of time in those studios, I spent a lot of time talking to him and getting advice on how to go about making work. And for me not to share that with him, I think he was a little hurt.”
The close relationship with his Deerfield teachers is just one reason Abreu decided to come back as the 2020-21 Wilson Fellow. He explained, “[I’ve been] thinking about how we are all the ultimate art works, that you’ve got to curate your own experiences, your own cultural experiences, and all that manifests in certain ways that you may not quite understand.”
The unique challenges that he faces as a teacher during COVID-19 also fascinate him. “I would not be honest if I said I wouldn’t prefer to be here under normal circumstances, but I’m making the best of it. If anything, it’s making it necessary for new avenues of instruction which will augment the pedagogy going forward,” he said.
In addition, he emphasizes how proud he is of the amazing student body and their work, especially their dedication to learning and the school community during the pandemic.
Abreu’s favorite part of the Deerfield community is its diversity. He said, “There is social unrest in the rest of the country and we’re certainly not immune to that here, but our close-knit community allows for discourse across many social lines. The work continues, but the answers rely on communities of future leaders like these. Students here need to believe and relish in that.”
He also believes that it is important for students to take part in as many opportunities as possible, practice their interests daily even through periods of stagnation, collaborate with others and their experiences to gain a more global worldview, be honest with constructive criticism instead of being condescending, and remember that they are all ultimate artworks.