UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture Commencement

Lionel Popkin, Dean of the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture

I am deeply inspired by your dedication to your work, to one another, and to a community rooted in the power of the arts. You are all remarkable. Congratulations to the Class of 2026!

Mariana Ibañez, Chair of the Department of Architecture and Urban Design

Congratulations Class of 2026! Thank you for strengthening AUD with your talent, curiosity and determination. The future needs your ideas and we cannot wait to see what you do next

Victoria Marks, Professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance

To the Class of 2026, It has been a tremendous pleasure watching you grow and deepen as artists! As you depart for new and exciting adventures, please stay in touch!  You will always be part of WACD! 

Today, we celebrate your extraordinary accomplishments and the journey that has led you to this moment. We also celebrate the loved ones, friends, teachers, mentors and coaches who helped you reach this milestone in your life.

Graduation marks both a culmination and a new beginning. It is a moment to reflect on your time at UCLA and the many ways you have grown — in mind, in creativity and in character. It also provides a chance to examine the path before you with renewed purpose.

Your graduation comes at a complex time in our history. Uncertainty can make it tempting to narrow your ambitions, even as the world needs you to expand them. I urge you to meet this moment with humanity. Your UCLA education has prepared you to navigate an evolving landscape and to turn uncertainty into opportunity.

The values you have cultivated here — kindness, integrity, curiosity, a commitment to service, and a respect for diverse perspectives — will serve as your foundation as you move forward to lead in your communities and professions. You now join a global network of more than 680,000 Bruins who are making a meaningful difference across every field and in every corner of the world. Stay connected to your classmates, and stay connected to this university.

You will always be a part of UCLA. And UCLA will always be a part of you.

On behalf of the entire UCLA family, I extend my warmest congratulations. We look forward to all you will accomplish and to the kindness you will bring to your communities in the years ahead.

You have worked so hard and endured so much on your journey to this culminating moment. While uncertainty has been a defining feature of these past several years, what I know with great certainty is that your honesty and creativity have not only enriched our campus community, but also ignited our collective imagination and offered us tools to help make sense of our complex, nuanced, and ever-changing world.

With your graduation, you join a remarkable community of UCLA Arts alumni—visionary artists, designers, architects, and thinkers who lead with imagination and leave a legacy of impact across every corner of society. You are trailblazers and catalysts for change. You aren’t just imagining the world as it is—you’re envisioning new possibilities for what it could be.

As you venture forth, I know you will continue to push boundaries and seek new answers to the questions that shape our time. I urge you to nurture the community you’ve built here at UCLA. The relationships you’ve cultivated will fuel and sustain you as you move forward.

Your time at UCLA may be coming to an end, but your impact on the world is just beginning. I hope you will stay connected to UCLA Arts, sharing the next chapters of your remarkable journey with us.

On behalf of the entire faculty and staff of the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, our heartfelt congratulations to the Class of 2026!

Lionel Popkin
Dean, UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture

Dean, UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture

Alumnus, visionary media artist, and Dataland co-founder

Hunter Blackwell arrived at the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture through an unconventional path. With a B.F.A. in glass from Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), his journey into architecture emerged through the gradual realization that the field could unite his interests in art, design, and critical inquiry.

While at RISD, his work grew in size and scope, culminating in a full-scale rotating living room built as a permanent installation for a shared studio. Feedback from visiting critics in the school’s architecture department resonated deeply and helped influence the direction of his sculptural process toward architectural thinking, opening a new door. Still, the transition was not immediate.

After finishing undergrad, he served as the studio manager of RISD’s Glass Department for four years before moving to Los Angeles and entering the production fabrication world. Blackwell was lead fabricator at a digital fabrication shop whose work spanned engineering projects, sculpture, furniture, and architectural fabrication, exposing him to a range of technical processes and machinery. It was there that he had the opportunity to work directly with architects and realized that architecture could synthesize the artistic and technical skills he had developed over the years.

“I realized I could actually bring all of my skills and interests into one place with architecture,” Blackwell said. 

He eventually enrolled in the UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design’s M.Arch. program. Entering a new field without the background many of his classmates had, he was humbled by the rigor of the program and faced a steep learning curve. The critical thinking and precision involved in designing buildings gave him a newfound appreciation for his home, Los Angeles, and transformed how he sees the built environment. Even seemingly minimal buildings now reveal immense effort, collaboration, and layers of decision-making.

At the same time, Blackwell has found himself reflecting on the differences between art and architecture. Though the disciplines often overlap and share similar values, he believes they operate according to fundamentally different goals.

“In art, ambiguity is essential,” he explained. “The openness of its interpretation is integral to the work.” Architecture, by contrast, often depends on clarity. Drawings and representations must communicate information precisely. A lack of clarity can create problems.

Yet Blackwell sees productive tension between the two fields. His background in art allows him to challenge some of architecture’s conventions while still engaging with the discipline’s rigorous demands. 

“It's a very rule-based field,” he said. “But having that art training lets me strategically critique or challenge some of those rules.” 

That sense of responsibility extends beyond aesthetics. For Blackwell, architecture requires thinking holistically about how projects interact with their surroundings and the communities they affect. As technologies and design tools continue to evolve, he believes architects must remain engaged not only in creating buildings, but also in understanding the broader consequences of what they build. 

Looking ahead, he hopes to continue developing his creative practice while pursuing teaching opportunities. 

“I’d love to teach,” he said. “Being able to use my art and architecture experience to challenge and contribute to both disciplines feels meaningful.”

Hunter Blackwell to deliver graduate student address

Sarah Lustgarten didn’t arrive at UCLA thinking she would become an artist, but she had always been interested in art.

For a long time, art felt like something she admired from a distance. That began to shift in high school, when she took a ceramics class. It was the first time she experienced a structured studio practice, and she loved it immediately. Still, when she arrived at UCLA, she chose a different direction, originally enrolling as a global studies major.

However, at the beginning of each quarter and before changing her major, she would approach professors and ask to be allowed into art classes, eventually enrolling in sculpture and new genres courses. That was the turning point.

“I fell in love with it,” Lustgarten said. From there, she applied to the UCLA Department of Art, got in, and never looked back. She later added a second major in communication, seeing it as a natural complement to her practice. One operates through visual language; the other through written and spoken systems. Together, she said, they inform each other in ways that continue to shape how she thinks and makes work.

Lustgarten describes her practice less as a fixed discipline and more as a process of exploration. She moves freely between materials, treating each new project as an experiment. That openness has become central to her work.

“I feel like that’s when I have the most fun,” she said. “That’s when my art feels like it has my hand in it the most.”

Color—particularly pink—plays a significant role in her work. It’s a choice that carries tension. For some viewers, she noted, pink can feel soft or joyful; for others, slightly unsettling or saccharine. She is interested in that emotional range and how a single visual decision can hold conflicting responses at once. 

Much of her recent work integrates small, overlooked objects found in everyday life: a discarded lip liner, a cigarette butt, fragments that hint at an unseen story. These remnants, she said, often spark questions about the people who left them behind. That curiosity has led her to recreate these remnants in ceramic and other materials, placing them in new contexts that ask viewers to see the discarded and the mundane differently. In some cases, she even invites viewers to handle these objects.

One work uses old license plates layered with pink glitter, ribbons, and hidden lettering spelling the words “miss remembers.” The work emerged from a prompt about erasure, but became something more personal: how meaning can be reconstructed from fragments.

In many of her works, glitter is especially compelling to Lustgarten because of its persistence. In fact, it has become something of a running joke in the studio. A classmate once told Lustgarten they knew they were in her old studio space because they found glitter in every nook and cranny.

As she looks ahead, Lustgarten is considering an M.F.A. but is in no rush. She hopes to spend time outside Los Angeles developing her practice and experimenting across disciplines.

“I feel like what’s been successful for me so far is just trying everything,” she said.

Above all, she remains committed to staying in creative spaces, wherever they lead.

Sarah Lustgarten to deliver undergraduate student address

If you have a question about the ceremony, please visit the Schedule & FAQ or contact Linda Holmes at linda.holmes@arts.ucla.edu

In Practice:
A Cross-Disciplinary Portrait of 
Creative Work at UCLA

Celebrating the extraordinary students of UCLA’s class of 2026

What's On: Exhibitions and Performances 
on view this weekend

Celebrate the Class of 2026!

UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture Commencement

Congratulations to the Class of 2026

Messages to the Graduates

A Message from Julio Frenk

A Message from Lionel Popkin

OUR KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Refik Anadol

OUR STUDENT SPEAKERS

Hunter Blackwell

Sarah Lustgarten

If you have a question about the ceremony, please visit the Schedule & FAQ or contact Linda Holmes at linda.holmes@arts.ucla.edu