LCAD’s 2026 Fine Arts Graduates Take the Spotlight

This spring, Laguna College of Art + Design is honored to present two exhibitions celebrating the graduating class of 2026 from the BFA and MFA Drawing + Painting programs. Across two of Laguna Beach’s most artistic locations, the LCAD Gallery and the Laguna Art Museum, BFA and MFA graduates are sharing fully realized bodies of work that reflect years of dedication, growth, and artistic discovery.

Laguna Beach has long been a place where art and community are inseparable. These exhibitions are a natural extension of that tradition, and we are proud that our graduating artists are stepping into it.

The Undergraduate Fine Arts Department presents Paradigms, an unfolding field of inquiry shaped by its graduating artists. What emerges is not simply a group show, but a constellation of individual practices. Paintings, drawings, and sculptures trace the full range of the Drawing + Painting program and reflect the unique voice each artist has developed over the course of their studies.

Collectively, the exhibition maps a series of parallel trajectories. Individually, each body of work asserts its own logic, testing the limits of medium, negotiating between discipline and intuition, and demonstrating a sustained engagement with process. The work is an arrival in progress and a shared space where emerging artists step forward as professionals.

Exhibiting Artists: Ichihi Aizawa, Annelise Becker, Xiaosy Chen, Yasuri Duncan, Alexandra Laderman, Margot Lange, Maria Martinez, Paxton Morgan, Anastasia Mukhina, Kyle Nielsen, Gage Pease, Anna Poulos, Lisa Rolland, Shirley Tate, Jaydon Tolbert

Presented in partnership with Laguna Art Museum, Undercurrents introduces the 2026 Master of Fine Arts graduates. Seven artists whose work revives time-honored skills in service of relevant and deeply personal contemporary art. They understand that skillful drawing and painting, as taught at LCAD, enables them to see with precision and communicate with purpose.

These artists are contemporary storytellers who bring a modern personal sensibility to timeless craft. Their work is rooted in careful observation, yet carries an imaginative depth that speaks to our enduring cultural legacy, to uncertainty, to change, and to the value of embracing the present. It is a rich and nuanced view of living and creating, and we are grateful to share it with the Laguna Beach community at one of the city’s most cherished cultural institutions.

Exhibiting Artists: Taylor Blue, Sydney Golba, Emilio Monahan, Joseph Todorovitch, Juri Umagami, Xiaoxue Walker, Yanbo Wang