With paper, pencils and ink, veteran students and staff created works of therapeutic works of art at the “Ink, Inspiration, & Insight” event on Wednesday in the lobby of UCF’s Office of Military and Veteran Student Success.
Veteran students and staff were invited to this event as a way for students to express creativity and decompress. This event was a part of the MVSS Wellness Series, which is new this semester and helps bring awareness to October as Mental Health Awareness Month.
Guest Kevin Haran, professor of visual arts and design, led the event through guidance and visual representation of his work. Haran has done art events for six years at the Lake Baldwin VA Clinic and has found that working with veterans particularly sparks conversations.
“It involves the mind and a lot of physical things,” Haran said. “It’s rolling up a print or painting or doing watercolor and it’s a very meditative act. It helps relax veterans.”
At the event, Haran demonstrated the art of printmaking, which is transferring ink from one surface to another. In his example, he drew a cat onto a piece of paper and stenciled the cat onto another piece of paper to be covered in black ink with a roller. From there, he would use another piece of paper on top and the roller to define the image.
McKenna Laughlin, events and programming coordinator at MVSS, attended the event. She said this event was a great outlet for her to be creative.
“I decided to come to this event because I don’t get that much time to be creative,” Laughlin said. “I feel like the only outlet for it is that I do yoga on the side, so this gives me something else to do to let out the creative steam.”
Abigal Kost, junior finance major and program specialist at MVSS, did her art inspired by “The Magnus Archives,” a weekly horror fiction podcast. Her art detailed an eye with multiple eyes in it with different colors.
“I like doing multiple colors,” Kost said. “The colors is a spark of inspiration.”
Nissa Suarez Saldana, student resources specialist II at MVSS, also attended the event. She explains that maintaining the mental health of their student veterans is extremely important in times like these.
“It’s a concern we all have, the mental well-being, physical well-being and the whole person for veterans,” Saldana said. “As a society, we’re going through a lot, and so we thought, ‘What can we do to support on different capacities in small ways for our students?’ And that was kind of how the talk came about.”
By the end of the event, veteran students and staff were able to see the results of their work on different colored inks.
“I am not a veteran,” Haran said. “But many of my family members have been veterans, and I like to give back.”
MVSS will be hosting their final event a part of the series, “Mighty Knights: Personal Defense Class” on Oct. 30 at the Student Union.