Art is not about dancing for the king

On the NEA's vulnerability

Left: Artwork titled “Sun Dress" by Dane Terry. Created using oil pastel on paper. Right: My obsession with color palettes on the right.

Update: I wrote this in February 2025 when the NEA changed their requirements for organization funding (aka any org that supports DEI or trans people don’t get funding). This week (May 5, 2025), the NEA terminated literary arts funding on a massive scale. The NEA itself remains vulnerable; Shitler / Orange Führer / Pumpkin Spice Palpatine / Sweet Potato Hitler / Cheetoh Satan / Cheetoh Pendejo / THAT f*cking guy mentioned eliminating the NEA entirely.

Sadly, this post is still relevant.

Would you take RTD for art?

Even as I crumple, visiting works of visual art is one act of resistance.

They joke about whether you love someone enough to take the 405 in LA. I love art so much that I’ll take the RTD.

I fell in love with visual art as a preteen. I went to the Norton Simon Museum of Art in Pasadena as a child, and I was DONE FOR. The Norton Simon Museum has a particularly good collection of Fragonard and Degas, which dovetailed with my obsession with tutus and frilly dresses at the time. I remember staring into those paintings and feeling like I was dissolving into them. Gainsborough’s The Blue Boy at the Huntington, too, astounded me with the way he rendered fabric and light with a paint brush.

My mom and dad were strict. I was a 1980s Korean American Rapunzel. But as good patriarchy soldiers, they wanted to make sure my virgin body was familiar with the arts so that some classy, pedigreed twentieth-century dude would deem me proper marriage material and ask me into matrimony at the appropriate time.

Of course, I did not know this at the time. Only that I was shocked that when I asked to be let out of the tower so I could go to LACMA with my friend Bonnie (who also loved art), they said yes.

How would we get there? I told them I’d researched and found the route on the bus system and mapped it out.

I often feel like a pessimist. Still, I know I’m an optimist because even though my parents said no to any social outing 99% of the time, I went to the library (this was way before the internet) and picked up a bunch of bus maps ahead of time anyway. Maybe. Maybe. You never know.

Yo, this was the LA bus system, also known as the Rapid Transit District, also known as the RTD. The RTD was not a great bus system in 1989, and I’m not sure it was decent even after it became part of the LACMTA (The Metro) in 1993.

I mapped the whole route out and showed my parents the plan and schedule. I don’t remember the details, but there were at least three transfers, one of which occurred right next to Skid Row, so I did not mention the location of that transfer to my parents.

Now. How did a girl who wasn’t let out of her house know so much about maps, travel, and navigation? Because that same girl was the family’s Human Mapquest. Before the days of Mapquest, Google Maps, and Waze, we had to use the Thomas Brothers Guide to figure out how to get somewhere. Before you got in the car, you took the destination street address and looked it up in the index of the Thomas Brothers Guide. Then you went to the page with the part of the map that included that street so that you could reverse-engineer the roads back to your originating point. Our Thomas Brothers Guide had pencil marks indicating detours and ways around potentially clogged main roads. Most of these marks were mine from the age of eight onward.

Because my mom was a nervous driver, she had me map out the routes when she drove. And sitting in the front seat, with the Thomas Brothers Guide on my lap, I’d announce the turns and streets as we went. I would, for instance, tell my mom to prepare to take a freeway exit at least one mile ahead of time (two miles if traffic was moving fast) and then remind her gently again and again as we reached the exit. Always with a level and calm voice to keep her chill. On surface streets, I’d announce turns well ahead of time. If she forgot the turn, I’d have to engineer an immediate, real-time workaround, again calmly. I had a Plan A, a Plan B, a Plan B, and a Plan C for our travels. I was a Human Algorithm.

In the same vein, I think I overwhelmed my parents with my level of detail and planning of the bus route to LACMA. So they nodded yes again. In hindsight I realize they were pretty sure I wouldn’t find a boyfriend on the RTD. And that they were definitely sure I was taking the RTD and not sneaking out to visit an unqualified paramour.

They didn’t know they had built a monster that would pwn them someday.

I was PSYCHED. When the day came, I had the maps, wore a crossbody purse so we wouldn’t get mugged, and filled it with a fake wallet with mugger money, a real wallet with the cash we’d need, coins for public phones, and many antiseptic wipes.

By antiseptic wipes, I don’t mean Purell. I mean the little square packets of rubbing alcohol-infused gauze I found in my mom’s nurse uniforms. No telling what we’d see (or have to touch) on our journeys, I thought!

We had a ball. I felt like a hobbit leaving Hobbiton. Our eyes were so wide the whole way. The bus lurched, and we held on to the poles when the bus got crowded and sat in the seats when it had room. It made stops every thirty seconds. These were no express buses. It was like this almost the entire way as we navigated surface streets from the San Gabriel Valley to the west side of Los Angeles. Most of the buses weren’t running on schedule, and so we had to wait during the transfers We left our town in the morning and didn’t get to LACMA for FOUR HOURS. (It was a 26-mile journey, one that would normally have taken about an hour by car). I don’t think we got there until after noon. Not a single moment was boring to two fifteen year olds from the suburbs.

But we got there!

We saw the art. I want to say we saw Helen Frankenthaler and Francis Bacon, but I’m certain I saw that show on an AP Art History field trip and not on our adventure. So, I don’t remember the specific exhibition, but the trip and the visit felt like liberation. It felt like an accomplishment. Art was my jailbreak.

Looking at art similarly unlocks me when I feel stuck. Maybe it’s this trip that I always recall when I view art. Maybe I made the trip to have that feeling.

(Okay, Christine is FINALLY connecting this to WRITING! And even better: they’re connecting this saga to how to start writing again!)

Sometimes, when I am blocked as a writer, I sit in a museum in front of a painting with a notebook and start writing. I’ll use the Notes app on my phone when I don't have a notebook. Before the Notes app existed, I used to email myself my written thoughts. I remember visiting Rothko’s Seagram Murals at the Tate Modern and hastily scribbling ideas and notes into my phone while my then-husband wondered if I’d received an urgent correspondence from work. No, it was an urgent correspondence from my SOUL, my dude.

Art got me out of the Rapunzel tower, a metaphorical imprisonment. That imprisonment wasn’t just the patriarchal ideals my parents imposed on me but my preconceptions of the world and my limitations. Art makes me feel seen; it makes the world expansive. It makes me feel curious. It makes me want to fucking live.

Try writing in front of art someday. I’ve friends who went to artist residencies; some, like MacDowell welcome visual artists and music composers alongside writers. My writers friends said they’ve had inspiring conversations with visual artists at dinner. I know my visual artist friends inspire me, too.

Where the resistance lives: Art galleries

I love art museums (please refer to my teenage adventure on the RTD). It is where you can see canonized work. Art museums are highly curated historical collections.

But I also really love art galleries, which, yes, are focused on selling art but also provide a glimpse into emerging artwork.

For so many years, I shied away from art galleries because they aren’t for the public in the way museums are. For many years, they felt like walking into a car dealership showroom. They scream, “The price of admission is the price of a painting!”

To be sure, there are snooty art galleries. I avoid those. I have discovered more welcoming art galleries like the ones in Oakland versus the ones in Sausalito. I have also discovered “juried art shows,” where the exhibited art in a gallery has been selected and judged as part of a competition.

I’m a total n00b when it comes to art galleries, but I started going to see the work of Rik Ritchey who happens to be a friend of mine. His most recent work involves bilateral drawing, simultaneously using both hands to draw, producing mirror images on the page. I once sat for him at his studio, and I remember sitting there watching him, his arms waving in coordination like a music conductor, each hand holding a piece of black chalk as he drew me.

Artwork by Rik Ritchey. Bilateral drawing!

Rik is so talented. His work contains so much tension and energy and if you want to equate it to food, it reminds me very much of “deconstructed food,” where a familiar food is broken down into parts. He lays bare the components of art, often disrupting process (his bilateral drawings) or combining process (his paintings are a kind of sculpture PLUS painting) to create the finished product. Of course I follow his art around. And of course in doing so, I discovered art galleries and juried art shows.

Some juried art gallery shows in the Bay Area include Gallery Route One’s juried annual exhibition and Mercury20’s juried group exhibition.

Your mileage may vary, but the more inclusive art galleries feel like amazing literary magazines. In Oakland, Johansson Projects, Mercury20, Good Mother, and Creative Growth count as a few (I’m learning as I go, and please share your faves). They show me what is happening with art today in real-time, at (near) ground level.

It is unbelievably gratifying to see all the work and to know that in the hellscape of this world, people are finding a way to express themselves in unique ways, to lay themselves vulnerable, to show you their perspectives, to show you something new, to show you something familiar and teach you something new about it. Artists are doing work that isn’t always rewarded or might not be embraced, and yet they persist. It’s kind of breathtaking.

I don’t have the budget to purchase all the art I want. Sometimes, I can and do buy smaller pieces. One time I made a custom queen-sized hand-pieced hand-quilted quilt in exchange for a brilliant piece of art that I could not otherwise afford. But when I find art I love, I seek the artist online, whether on Instagram (where most visual artists seem to dwell for obvious reasons) or on a website, and then I tell them about their work's impact on me.

In this world of daily devastation, consider sending an artist a compliment. I promise you, you’ll make their day. And 99% of them will reply to tell you so.

“I’m not gonna spend my life dancing for (only) the king”

My amazing artist friend, Dane Terry (he of the painting at the very top of this post!), once said, “I’m not gonna spend my life dancing for (only) the king.”

He said the thing about dancing for the king to explain why he’s kept the price of his artwork as low as he can sustain. Dane is the purest of artists who lives, breathes, and prioritizes art in a way I have yet to dare. He plays the piano (his work on my partner’s upcoming album is wow. I play the piano, but not like THAT). He performs theater. And Dane Terry paints. I had no idea he painted until last year, and then I immediately bought one of his pieces. His work is savage, pushes boundaries, and explodes with queer joy. I am in awe of him. (He has the range!) I think his work demands a higher selling price. But that’s not why he’s making art.

As I return to writing fiction, I’ve considered Dane’s line about dancing for the king—a lot—and how that concept is broken down into multiple components, such as motivation, audience, and outcomes.

All these parts are personal, and all these parts are political. They are what can turn your art into sludge. Into propaganda. Into bullshit.

If you dance for the king, you might have a better chance at a bestseller. If you dance for the king, more people may be drawn to your work. If you dance for the king, you’ll have fewer haters. If you dance for the king, maybe the “right people” will think your work is mad lit. If you dance for the king, your chances for higher financial returns increase.

If you dance for the king, is your work really art?

The king is a flawed audience.

I’m pretty sure the government will cut funding to the arts. Last week, I dreaded the day the government would cut funding to the arts or redirect it in some nefarious way. I had to strikethrough what I wrote earlier this week because my fears came true. On Friday, February 7, the NEA announced new guidance and compliance requirements for art project grants:

• The applicant will not operate any programs promoting “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws, in accordance with Executive Order No. 14173.

• The applicant understands that federal funds shall not be used to promote gender ideology, pursuant to Executive Order No. 14168, Defending Women From Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government. (NEA, 2025).

According to an accompanying NEA press release, “Funding priority will be given for projects that take place in 2026-2027 that celebrate and honor the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. This can include incorporating an America250-related component or focus within a larger project” (NEA, 2025).

Additionally, the NEA shut down the Challenge America Grant, which was meant to support underserved communities (February 7, 2025).

You may or may not know that I’m a board member of Voices of Our Nations Arts (VONA), which has offered multi-genre workshops for BIPOC writers since 1999. I’m a five-time VONA alum and faculty. It is my literary home. It is where I learned to build a ladder behind me. It is where I learned not to write for the king and where I found an authentic writing voice true to me, my cultural roots, and to what I want the world to look like.

VONA has had NEA funding since its onset. It, along with all other arts organizations that center marginalized voices, no longer qualifies for an NEA grant. While many organizations have money in their coffers for a “rainy day,” now is the time to donate to arts organizations that you care about so that they continue to exist and avoid peril.

If you’ve ever read something that teaches you something new. If you’ve ever looked at art and discovered something new about yourself. Donate to the arts. They’re in danger.

I don’t even know how individual NEA grant applications will be impacted. Stay tuned.

Traditionally, the NEA has been one of those “gatekeeper” grants to receive. One of the ones that say, “You’re a legit artist.” Maybe this award becomes a strawman, too, like so much of what has caused us moral injury. It never was what we thought it was.

So what is true? What will stay true?

Dancing for the king nearly killed my writing. I sold my novel on fifty pages. Those are the only pages I had. And because I wrote it under contract, I felt a duty and obligation to someone other than myself as I wrote and finished a draft of the novel. And…it did not work out. I entered an agonizing writer’s block and unending self-doubt.

Art is the most human thing we can do. It is not “frivolous.” It is the very thing that defines humans, where we can synthesize our feelings and experiences into a third form.

(Okay. I’m pausing here, because I hear the “Well actually—” voices. I live with a twelve-year-old who corrects me and brings me down to the “literal” world. “Well actually—” she would say, “gorillas make art, too. They take what they see and feel and make paintings, you know.” Yes, gorillas like Koko and Michael make art. You can buy art made by gorillas. (Gorillas need help)).

But can we agree that art needs to stay pure and unadulterated from profit, propaganda, and outside influence. It needs to stay clear from the king. (And because the gorillas don’t know their paintings are being sold, they’re not doing it for the money).

Art is an act of resistance, and of course, THIS government would cut funding because resistance, individual expression, and compassion (aka art) are the very things that threaten fascism. But maybe the government shouldn’t have been there in the first place.

Maybe?