Get Out of Your Head and Into Art

Workshops and classes at Duke through Duke Arts Create, the Co-Lab and elsewhere inspire staff and faculty

A collage of various art examples -- a painting of a skull, five women holding watercolors, a man holding a wood cutout and a man demonstrating screen printing to two onlookers.
Various opportunities exist at Duke for creating art, including Duke Arts Create workshops and the Innovation Co-Lab. Photos courtesy of Holly Rich, Mellissa Ubbens, Duke Arts Create

Holly Rich does not consider herself the artistic type except when it comes to one specific discipline.

“If doodling were a profession, I would be a professional doodler,” said Rich, a Program Coordinator for the Department of Religious Studies

Instead of focusing on trying to make doodling a new career, Rich attends Duke Arts Create workshops to find other artistic outlets where she might expand her creative avenues. The hands-on workshops are available to Duke staff, faculty and students at no charge, but require registration.

Last fall, Rich attended two Ofrenda workshops – one where she made Papel Picado (cut paper) and another where she painted a rock to look like a Calavera, both for Dia de Muertos. She snagged a spot in a screen-printing class and hoped for another in a lantern-making workshop. All are artistic expressions she has never tried before and never would have if not for the classes.

A headshot of a woman in glasses
Holly Rich

“During the day, I’m at my desk sending tons of emails, coordinating, organizing, communicating,” Rich said. “The classes are decompress time. It’s just time to create and it rejuvenates all my other energy.”

Making art and expressing yourself creatively can be a way to boost mental health, according to Katherine Applegate an Assistant Professor in Psychiatry and Behavior Sciences who works with patients at the Duke Spine Center.

Applegate often works with patients who have endured chronic pain or catastrophic injuries, and usually encourages them to create art as a way to foster mindfulness. Her patients have delved into woodworking, watercolors and drawing, to name a few.

“They’re in their head and we’re trying to get them out of their head and into the present – doing something neutral or positive by doing a physical task,” Applegate said. “That helps them come back to the present and to interact with something. It interrupts the ruminating and catastrophizing, which are the most toxic thought patterns that create a lot of stress.”

Here are some other ways Duke colleagues create art to foster well-being.

Several copies of screen print paper sit on the ground
a decorative rock is painted to look like a Day of the Dead skull
A collection of tissue paper flowers

Some examples of art created by Holly Rich at Duke Arts Create events includes screen printing, a Calavera and Papel Picado. Photos courtesy of Holly Rich

Art classes from the other side

Matthew Tauch, a book designer at Duke University Press, can’t remember a time he wasn’t involved in art. He drew all the time as a kid and thought he might become a comic book artist or design record album covers before discovering graphic design as a career.

A man prepares to demonstrate screen printing for onlookers
Matthew Tauch demonstrates screen printing during a Duke Arts Create class. Photo courtesy of Duke Arts Create

Not too long ago, he fell in love with a new artistic expression: screen printing.

He’s become so involved with the discipline that he’s been on the other side of Duke Arts Create workshops the past few years – teaching screen printing classes once or twice a semester.

Tauch has seen everyone from students to physicians to professors in engineering come to the classes and become enthralled with the craft.

“It’s a really beautiful thing because it is so repetitive,” Tauch said. “Once you’re set up and printing, there’s a real flow that can happen. That flow state is really sort of relaxing. No matter what happened with the rest of your day or your week, if you go into the studio and you’re just printing, it allows your mind to sort of let go of all of it.

“It can become almost meditative in a way, which is really nice. You’re not even thinking about what you’re doing in the moment necessarily, but you’re also not thinking about other stresses.”

Plus, Tauch said, creating the art has another benefit.

“There's a physical aspect to it, there's the mental aspect to it, and there's also a social aspect to being creative because you meet other people that you know are sort of doing the same thing as you are,” Tauch said.

The department that watercolors together

Mellissa Ubbens has been working since 1997 as Clinical Pharmacist at Duke and spent her life before that studying to be a pharmacist. Although she had always yearned for an artistic outlet in her life, she never had the time.

“It was all science, science, science,” she said.

But about five years ago, she discovered a series of watercolor tutorials on YouTube called Let’s Make Art by artist Sarah Cray that helped make painting watercolors accessible. It broke down exactly what supplies she needed and precisely what to do with the brush. “It’s almost like paint by numbers, it’s that easy,” Ubbens said. The tagline on Cray’s website says, “Get out of your head and into some watercolor.”

five women hold paintings of a bear
A group of people hold paintings of a pumpkin while a TV displaying the same pumpkin is behind them.

Mellissa Ubbens, second from left in left photo, invites her Pharmacy Department colleagues over for watercolor workshops and fellowship regularly. Photos courtesy of Mellissa Ubbens

When Ubbens was tasked with helping foster resiliency in the Duke University Hospital Pharmacy Department, she thought gathering groups to share in her creative passion could encourage camaraderie.

“Our job isn’t warm and fuzzy all the time,” Ubbens said. “We’re not talking about happy things the majority of the time. But when we have a painting party, we talk about everything else.”

What started as small groups over the course of the past year has turned into a regular, open gathering every couple months at Ubbens’ home, complete with potluck munchies to snack on while painting.  

“From the perspective of someone who is completely un-artsy, it was fun to tap into that and a neat little social outlet,” said Mara Watson, a fellow Clinical Pharmacist. “It’s just a nice way to get together with co-workers and not be thinking about work because our jobs are stressful.”

Plus, Ubbens hopes it can ignite a passion for arts in the same way it did for her. She started with watercolors and has now dabbled in pottery, metal jewelry and oil painting.

“I just love art to death, and since this was my gateway art, I'm hoping this is the gateway art for other people too,” Ubbens said.

Where technology and art unite

At the Duke Innovation Co-Lab space at the Technology Engagement Center, Co-Lab Studio Manager George Breeden has seen students, staff and faculty come into the makerspace knowing precisely what they want to create and just needing the tools to make it.

A coasters stand sits on a desk nook.
Coasters are one of the items that can be made in an Innovation Co-Lab Roots program workshop. Photo by Jodie Valade

But he also regularly sees people to the Co-Lab space with a vague idea for an art project or gift and lots of questions for how to get there. 

“Our mission is just to enable creativity in whatever form that is,” Breeden said.

With locations at the Technology Engagement Center, Rubenstein Arts Center and Wilson Residence Hall, the Co-Lab spaces and the Roots program provides the tools, high-tech equipment and expertise for the Duke community to bring designs to life.

Tools available to students, faculty and staff to use for free include 3D printers, laser cutters, sewing machines, water jet cutters, routers and vinyl cutters. For certain workshops, makers are responsible for providing materials for projects.

Free Roots program workshops this semester include DIY Décor: Make a Mug, Make a Personalized Coaster, Screen Print a T-shirt and Engrave a Personalized Picture Frame.

“The benefits of working with your hands and creating something for mental health, I think is a particularly important aspect that maybe we don’t talk about a ton,” Breeden said, “but it is something that’s important, especially for some of our staff who have more abstract jobs.

“Having an opportunity to come in here and make a physical thing is a different task that helps give them a break to do something creative.”

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