Integrating the arts into higher education pedagogy provides an opportunity for cultivating rich ideas and high-level thinking, capitalizing on the creativity that every person already possesses and uses (Livingston, 2010). As Newton and Plummer (2009) note "the use of the creative arts as pedagogical strategy enables individuals to better understand themselves, [and] to stimulate thinking" (p. 75). We extend that premise to examine the impact of an arts activity on scholarly thinking. Our exploratory study examines academics' (graduate students and educators) identity and role constructs (Kelly, 1955) to understand to what extent engaging in arts-based activities supports meaning-making and conceptualizing research questions. We asked participants to reflect on collages they created, how the collage process supported their research conceptualization, challenges they encountered, and their overall reflections on the process as an adjunct to written scholarly work. We show that the process of creating collages supported participants in making their tacit knowledge explicit, in reflecting at meta-cognitive levels, and in transforming their thinking, often in ways they anticipated would affect their future practice.