They're just about the first works of art you see in the Tim Rollins and Kids of Survival exhibition currently at the Frye (my review), right after you pass by a projection of the documentary about K.O.S. that describes that, in order to be members of the studio workshop run by Rollins in the South Bronx, the teenagers had to follow certain rules.

One of those rules was: Don't get your girlfriend pregnant. (Almost all the members were male.) Other rules were more typical—go to class, don't do drugs, typical stuff for a program for poor, difficult kids other teachers have decided can't be taught.

So I wondered when I looked at these two small paintings (which are early and atypical of the Kids' later style), which side do they fall on? The biggest hint comes not from the art itself but from the wall labels, which read "watercolor on anti-abortion legislation."

But just looking at the images, there is nothing politically fixed about them, which I like. Angry Father and Mother—I think the man's on the right and the woman has bigger tears, but I'm not sure—is a simple portrait of divided despair. Angry because they wanted to be a father and a mother and had to get an abortion instead? Or angry because they had to have a child they didn't want? House of the Angel looks like a dream of domestic life that's died and is about to go to heaven. (What are those white shapes in the windows besides eyes that anthropomorphize and sort of trivialize the house? Imagine the picture without them.)

These aren't about politics, they're more direct: They're about the lived experience of abortion and class and gender and pain.