Maya Lin is a pioneer. Her contributions to the arts are more than just about the work that she's made, the sculptures that she's produced, the monuments that she's created, the buildings that she's designed. She has really been a leader in thinking about what an American aesthetic is. Not just what American art should look like, but what it should actually do, and what it should speak for. At the same time Maya's work pushes at the boundaries of what art can be in America, and that it can be socially aware, that it can be beautiful, that it can function, and it can talk about issues that are going to be important for generations to come. The first time that the NEA really facilitated a project of mine, when I first stepped into Washington having been chosen for my design for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. You go there, and you walk through there and there it is. All those names. Just in its simplicity, it's just the way that it was designed that it is natural, it's earth, and like the names on the wall they're not in any particular order. It's just the way they fell. Huh, it's the first time I used that. The way, the way they fell. Maya's work is very personal. It's very emotional. There are lots of words we could use to describe Maya Lin's art, but my favorite was quiet. She creates a space of quiet that allows you to have your own moment of discovery and insight about place, about history, about who we are as people. I had gone back to graduate school after having completed the Memorial. And I had applied and received an NEA visual artist grant, and it was huge. It wasn't the amount of money. It wasn't actually that much, but it was being part of a great group, and you could literally apply and get a grant from your government. I thought that was fantastic. They followed me around for I think three or four years to create "Maya Lin, A Strong Clear Vision. I wasn't really aware of the NEA grant. I think I was a little embarrassed when it was nominated for an Academy award I was even more embarrassed when it won. In a way the documentary was a little bit hard and yet at the same time I was very grateful because what I had done was like kind of bottling it up. People have no idea what I had gone through and I think from an artist's point of view, people should know, sometimes what artists have to go through. We are there as artists to question and to push buttons and to propose ways of thinking that are fresh and new, and in so doing they might become controversial and that's a good thing. There will be a projector playing a 1940s actual film of Chinatown, so that from the outside you'll know that you're almost looking into the past. You're almost looking at the Chinatown shop, from a shop keepers perspective. It was 1999, I would get letters from a group called the confluence foundation. This was a project that focused on the bicentennial of the Lewis and Clark journey. I had seen the woman's table at Yale. Antone watched a documentary about Maya and the Vietnam war memorial. Let's ask Maya Lin. She's the one. She can tell the story through her art. Automatically, I was like well this isn't really what I do and then I got a call from the then governor of Washington state. Gary Locke said, well would you just meet with the group and into my loft comes the tribal elders of the Chinook tribe, the Umatilla, and the Nez Perce. I think it was Chief Snyder of the Chinook tribe, said well, excuse me but Lewis and Clark did not discover this land. We were here and we think you can tell that story. That multi-layered story. And I said if we can look at the Pacific Northwest and not just look at it from a perspective that intertwines the Lewis and Clark story with the Native American story but also from an ecological vantage point, I said I'd do the project. I'd be honored. And so we started that was in 2000 and we're still working on it. It will be my longest project I know the NEA has been really wonderfully supportive. If we could look at this place, reflect back in time. Not just 200 years but deeper. But look at it from the different cultures that have lived here, as well as the ecological history of these places. When we think of confluence, it's six sites along the Columbia River system. Confluence and Maya Lin used the Lewis and Clark expedition not as a celebration of what those two explorers did but as a moment in recorded time for us to look back. The descendants of the people Lewis and Clark met. They're still here and they're still practicing their culture. And that's what this art in this education is all about. I really did not envision a confluence. That's a national confluence, like it is the tribes have this story. It's not only for white people who were not in it. It's for Indians as well. To know what your people have done. Maya's art makes confluence. However if Maya had not worked with tribes, many, many hours. Listening to them, hearing them, hearing their stories. Then it would not have the meaning that it does. She was touched by their stories. They are touched by her art, and long for healing that art and nature had created. I think this project would've happened if Maya Lin wasn't part of it. But not nearly as profoundly. Not nearly as thoughtfully. Not nearly as inclusively. I'm very fortunate and very lucky. If my work, that probably would never have been done without the support of the NEA. Like if we go back to the Vietnam Memorial. If they hadn't had the funding to set up the competition, would I even be here today? If in anyway my works, supported by the NEA can emphasize how important it is for a country to support the arts and hopefully I'm a good example, then I think it's really important that we let people realize how much the NEA has been almost the backbone, quietly of major institutions in the arts of artists in the arts, of public art projects. Man as a species has made art from the beginning whether it's the Lascaux caves, or the pre-Columbian pottery, we communicate. We use language, and we use the arts. And I think it really helps define who we are as a species. And for a country not to support the arts would be a shame. I would say it's time we gave more to the arts again.