Art can transform the lives of inner-city youth, the founder of an after-school art workshop told a crowd of more than 100 at the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Tim Rollins, whose Kids of Survival (KOS) program was featured in a recent documentary film, discussed his experiences creating an after-school alternative for students from the South Bronx.

KOS developed from a special education art program that Rollins was commissioned to start in 1981.

Three to four times a week, a dozen students aged 12 to 25 met in a workshop to collaborate on paintings.

Many of the students are learning disabled or emotionally handicapped, but Rollins said he tries to turn this liability into an asset.

Rollins said one of the primary purposes of the program is to help students realize their potential.

"Incredible kids with such talent and skill were not being recognized or developed by the public schools," Rollins said.

Rollins said he relies on art to help students overcome their fears of reading.

"Books are the enemy of my kids; they are something that make [them] feel stupid," Rollins said. "With Dracula, we began to possess the book--the students reacted to it."

The artwork has incorporated pages of books including George Orwell's 1984 and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter.

After gluing these book pages on 15-foot sheets of linen, participants come up with creative images stemming from the text and paint them on the pages, Rollins said.

Many of the works have been exhibited in different museums and galleries around the world.

Rollins said he uses any profits from sales of these works to help support students' college educations.

Rollins received a planning grant in 1991 from the National Endowment for the Arts to develop a charter school. He hopes to open the South Bronx Academy of Art soon.

Rick Savinon, 25, who was a participant in KOS in 1984, is now the assistant director of the program and was one of three KOS participants who helped to present the program with Rollins.

Savinon said the program has shown him that older students have the ability to become mentors.

"You can feel the energy when you come into the studio," Savinon said. "I used to think that art was a secondhand hobby and that it can't change lives. It changes everyone's life at KOS."

Other students vouched for the uniqueness of the program.

"KOS is something that helps people who want to do art, something that the public schools can't do," said Emanuel Carvajal, 15. "Tim gives us a way to do things."

The documentary film, "Kids of Survival: The Art and Life of Tim Rollins and KOS," will be shown today at the Gutman Conference Center at 12:15.