Judy Baca delivered the Commencement Speech at USC’s Roski School of Art and Design on Friday, May 11, 2018.

“When I worked on the Great Wall, just as I am now working on a project in the Central Valley doing 8 murals alongside immigrant farmworkers who feed the nation… every decision I make is informed by my abuelita’s question, “Para que sirve esto, compañeros?”
What purpose does it serve? What is an artist today to do?
The question is so important, given that art is a conceptual transformation of the ordinary into the sacred.
We must continue to interrogate how we apply our whole selves (all that is human in us) with integrity.

– Judy Baca