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The act of creating something is both a tangible enterprise, and an empowering exercise.

Knowing this full well, artist Tim Rollins, who recently visited ������, has given inner-city youths a concrete reason to pursue literacy and a path to achievement for more than 20 years. He and his Kids of Survival (KOS) read and discuss works of literature and music and then explore ways to find visual counterpoints to them.

Artist-activist Tim Rollins facilitated a workshop for regional teachers, arts program administrators, and ������ students interested in art education and art as activism. (Photo by Bill Bullen)

Their finished works of art, rooted in both the classic canon and urban street culture, have been shown in museums around the world.

Their exhibition “Let there be Light: After the Creation” was created in collaboration with metropolitan Washington, D.C.-area elementary, middle, high school, and George Mason University students along with several professional artists.

Inspired by Franz Josef Haydn’s oratorio The Creation (which is based upon the account of the first seven days in Genesis and Milton’s Paradise Lost), the exhibition features artworks including a folio of seven screenprints.

Rollins encouraged the group to investigate ideas of creation, including research into the big bang theory and images collected by the Hubbell telescope.

Mounted in Little Hall’s Clifford Gallery Feb. 25 – April 6, “Let there be Light” became the focal point for several campus and community events, including an outreach workshop for area arts administrators, middle and high school teachers, and ������ students.

An interdisciplinary panel discussion featured Rollins and faculty and staff members from art and art history, philosophy and religion, English, music, geology, environmental studies, and the chaplain’s office.

Another exhibit, in the Picker Art Gallery, features Rollins and KOS’s work in progress on a National Science Foundation commission to create a work that responds to Darwin’s The Origin of Species for the 150th anniversary of its publication.

That exhibit became the subject of a faculty development lunch and talk aimed at the Western Traditions and Challenge of Modernity core courses.

The programs were sponsored by ������’s Institute for Creative and Performing Arts, art and art history department, Picker Art Gallery, University Studies, and the Faculty Development Council.