Each year, the Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA) seeks to build on an internationally recognized heritage of innovation that dates back to 1882. The independent arts school sent its latest iteration of hopeful creatives into the world last weekend during its 2016 commencement event.

Bagpipes and cheers heralded the entrance of 117 CIA graduates for the ceremony held May 14 at Cleveland Museum of Art's Gartner Auditorium. Students arrived in home-decorated mortarboards for a two-hour celebration of inventive boundary-pushing that school officials believe will serve them well in whatever career they choose.

"We've built a community of peers here at CIA, creating works that make people comfortable with being uncomfortable," said Grafton Nunes, CIA president and CEO.

The 2016 graduating class leaves CIA with a visual arts and design education in 15 majors:

* Painting
* Biomedical art 
* Drawing
* Ceramics
* Glass
* Printmaking
* Industrial design
* Graphic design
* Interior architecture
* Jewelry + Metals
* Illustration
* Animation
* Game design
* Photography + Video
* Sculpture + Expanded Media  

This year's graduates also hand down a legacy marked by significant milestones and exciting projects, administrators said. For example, the 2016 class was the first to graduate from CIA's unified campus in Uptown. CIA had been operating as a split campus since 1976. The addition last fall of the 80,000-square-foot George Gund Building on Euclid Avenue helped centralize operations for the 2016 academic session.

CIA's newest grads also had their work appear on a high-definition video mesh above the Gund facility's entrance. Among the projects represented were animated shorts created for the Cleveland Museum of Natural History's planetarium dome and an architectural redesign of Cleveland Metroparks Zoo's primate, cat and aquatics building.

In past years, CIA's body of 550 students has gone on to design products or display artwork worldwide, while the school has long served as a resource of public arts programming through gallery exhibitions, visiting artist lectures and showings at the Cinematheque repertory theater.

Oscar-nominated actor Willem Dafoe, who gave this year's commencement address, said any type of artistic endeavor, be it a big-budget tent-pole movie franchise seen by millions or an abstract chamber piece viewed by two-dozen, is nurtured by hard work.

"It's all making, problem solving and doing," said Dafoe. "My mantra for you is, the work itself is what will sustain you."

The Cleveland Institute of Art is part of Fresh Water's underwriting support community.