The Portland Museum of Art will introduce a colorful wall-size piece of art when it opens at 11 a.m. Friday. The 13-foot-by-34-foot permanent installation by Maine native Tim Rollins and his artist collective Kids of Survival will dominate the museum’s Great Hall.
The museum purchased the work with financial support from the Maine Center for Creativity. PMA spokesman Graeme Kennedy declined to say how much the museum paid for the piece, citing museum policy.
Rollins, a Pittsfield native, will be at the museum for the unveiling of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which coincides with the opening of an exhibition of his work, “Unbound: Tim Rollins and K.O.S.” He will read from the play by Shakespeare that inspired the work, and members of the Portland Symphony Orchestra will perform.
For “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Rollins and his team collaborated with a textile manufacturer to produce the work, which was printed on sheet music using watercolor, ink, mustard seed and other materials.
“I learned a lot from going to quilting in rural Maine,” Rollins said. “These women – almost always women – would get together. They would try to blow each other away with their patch, but when you put it all together, it’s absolutely beautiful and stunning. It’s democracy made visible and made material.”
This work looks like a quilt patch: Splashes of color, applied in patterns over a large surface.
Rollins studied fine arts at the University of Maine in Augusta and earned a bachelor’s degree at the School of Visual Arts in New York. In 1981, he began teaching art to special-education students in the South Bronx, and in 1984 began the Art and Knowledge Workshop, which led to the formation of K.O.S.
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