This semester, 14 University of North Georgia students will paint a mural at the Avita Behavioral Health Crisis Center in Gainesville.
The project is funded by a UNG presidential incentive award and is part of Associate Professor Erin McIntosh’s special topics in mural painting class.
McIntosh said her students spent the first six weeks of class developing design proposals, which they presented to Avita’s executive staff on Monday, Feb. 23.
Senior political science major Anita Equivel Lopez’s design was chosen. It shows a brood of ducklings swimming between lily pads to follow their mother.
“I was very surprised. I’m super excited for my first mural,” said Lopez. “At the time I was working on sketches, a friend had just gotten ducklings. They are so cute, and I thought it would be really fun to paint them.”
Anita Equivel Lopez’s design (photo provided by Erin McIntosh)
This will be the fifth time McIntosh has taught a class that created a mural for the crisis center.
Their partnership began four years ago, when Avita Executive Assistant Hariah Hutkowski toured the facility and noticed a lack of color on its walls.
At the time, Hutkowski’s daughter, Hannah, was studying digital and studio arts at UNG, and he reached out to her professor, McIntosh, to propose a collaboration.
“We get some color, they get some experience, and we’re all a happy family,” said Hutkowski, explaining that the murals are designed to “match the clientele” at the crisis center, where patients stay for varying lengths of time during crisis stabilization and detoxification.
“They’re in there for substance use disorders and mental health issues, so we wanted calming murals,” said Hutkowski. “No exciting colors, but pleasant colors.”
A mural painted in the crisis center peer living room in 2023.
Hannah Hutkowski, who graduated in 2024, won the design competition that year with a painting of a flock of birds emerging from a night sky and flying toward a sunrise. “I was very grateful for the opportunity, because you work your whole life to make art for other people,” she said. “It’s not art for yourself, but it’s art that can inspire others.”
Hannah said she hoped the painting would “bring peace” to patients.
“The whole idea behind the design is that when we’re going through hard times, we need a flock to fly with,” she said. “It’s the idea that a glorious morning awaits every darkest night…It reminds us that the things we go through shape us, and without the night, we can’t have context for the day.”
As the design-winning student, Hannah oversaw the mural painting process that year.
“Normally, I don’t work with others when it comes to art, but it was a really good experience,” she said. “It was definitely a little hard, because we all have our own styles…[but] we found ways to bring in everyone’s talents.”
This year, Lopez will oversee the painting process. Because this is her first time participating in a mural project, she says she will rely on McIntosh for “most of the leading.”
For the first four projects, McIntosh’s students painted directly onto the facility’s walls. This time, she said they will paint on mural cloth in the classroom then transport the finished piece to the center for installation.
“When you’re painting directly on a wall, you can make adjustments as needed in relation to that space,” McIntosh said. “We won’t actually see [this mural] in the space until we install it, so that will be a new challenge.”
The wall where the mural will hang is roughly 45′ wide.