DURHAM - Ellen Duda puts her drawing hand on top of the glass mannequin head known as the "dome of creativity" and recites her graduation vows. She promises to be an honorable mentor, to help others learn about good art and good business, and to do her teachers proud long after she leaves this school. Removing her hand, she turns to SeeSaw Studio staffer Emmanuel Thompson and begins an elaborate secret handshake -- bumping elbows, slapping hands and ending with a "Whooooop!"

The ritual ends the first of two spring graduations for Duda, 18. She'll leave Durham School of the Arts in June with a diploma and the academic training she'll need for college. SeeSaw has equipped her with something rarer: experience -- not just in making art but in manufacturing, financing, marketing and selling.

A nine-year-old nonprofit, SeeSaw creates opportunities for students to learn about design, entrepreneurship, art and life. Working on commissioned projects for local businesses, they design T-shirts, banners and logos. They create jewelry and make Art-o-mat objects, small works that can be dispensed from retrofitted cigarette machines around the world. Many move on to prestigious schools such as N.C. State University's Colleges of Design and Engineering; others have launched design businesses.

For life skills, Jaylan Rhea, 12, says SeeSaw has taught him how to fit any assignment into his own creative vision. Jevontez Massey, 15, has learned to see past people's outward appearances and to be stronger in the face of peer pressure. Shanta Thomas, 19, sees ways to use art to come to terms with crime and political turmoil.

As in a traditional guild system, students work their way through the ranks from entry level to senior designer. Today's Arts & Entertainment section offers short profiles of SeeSaw artists on different steps of the ladder.

ELLEN DUDA, 18 SENIOR DESIGNER DURHAM SCHOOL OF THE ARTS

Ellen Duda hadn't considered a career in art before she came to SeeSaw. It's not that she didn't love making art. But who wants to be a starving artist?

The day a stranger walked into SeeSaw and asked where to buy one of the cool screen-printed T-shirts that a neighbor had -- a T-shirt she had designed -- her vision of an artist's life changed. This one had a full belly.

"I think that's the first time I was like, 'Wow, it's not just friends and family that like my work,' " Duda says. "It makes me hopeful for things to come."

In addition to her T-shirts, Duda's silk-screened banner designs were selected for a commissioned display at West Village/Blue Devil Ventures in the American Tobacco Historic District. She was pleased to realize that she liked having her work scrutinized and critiqued.

Duda will attend N.C. State University's College of Design in the fall, aiming for a graphic design career. College interviews were a breeze, as her SeeSaw designer duties had included interviewing aspiring SeeSaw apprentices.

"It gave me the experience of being on the other side, just to see like what kinds of things I'm looking for in an artist," she says, "and to help me project those things that I think are important."

Duda says she's curious what she might have become had SeeSaw not shown her that art was a viable option.

"I still probably would be nervous about the idea of going to design school," she says. "I would have only had some Web site telling me, 'You can do this.' But I wouldn't know actually if I could do that or not."

JAYLAN RHEA, 12 DILLARD DRIVE MIDDLE SCHOOL, CARY DESIGNER

When Jaylan Rhea got his first set of Legos at age 5, he built a toy house.

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