This Has Been a Tough Year in 2025

Notes from the margins, written with institutions in mind.

This has been a tough year in 2025 for so many of us.

Not just personally—but across the systems many of us have devoted our lives to. Collectively and as individuals.

Museums, libraries, archives, galleries, nonprofits, and educational institutions have taken hit after hit. Budgets have been cut. Positions frozen. Programs quietly reduced or eliminated. I feel it not only as an artist, but as someone who has spent most of my adult life committed to community, education, and cultural work—often without expecting anything in return.

I share this in hopes that it opens dialogue. That it helps ensure other artists don’t feel alone in these moments. And that it sparks deeper, more honest relationships between artists and the institutions that rely on our labor, insight, and care.

This reflection is written with institutions, corporations, and foundations in mind. It’s also written from a very human place. I’m asking for greater openness about processes, and more care for the people moving through them.

I also want to name something that doesn’t always get said: individual support matters deeply. The likes, the shares, the messages, the conversations, the invitations, the moments when someone shows up to an exhibition or speaks an artist’s name in a room they’re not in—those gestures carry artists more than most people realize.

This morning, the first thing I did was open an anticipated email.
I didn’t hold my breath.
I anticipated the answer in advance.
And still, I let myself hope.

It was another fellowship decision. I read it while sitting amidst boxes--packing up the last 25 years of my life—pausing between emails, work tasks, and conversations, trying to maintain smiles and steady presence while supporting loved ones through their own life transitions.

At the same time, I’m trying to soak up as much time as possible with our youngest child—being present in the quiet moments—knowing that after this spring’s graduation, she will step fully into her adulthood. That awareness sits with me constantly, a reminder of how layered this moment is.

Grant and fellowship applications are labor. Real labor. Especially for independent artists without institutional backing or access to professional grant writers. They ask us to compress years of lived experience, vision, and responsibility into tight word counts—often without room for context, nuance, or disclaimers.

Most of us do this while balancing paid work, caregiving, volunteering, health realities, and the daily act of creating. We are encouraged to be visible yet judged for what we share and what we don’t. Too much honesty can feel risky. Too much joy can be misread. Silence becomes suspect.

In a previous fellowship, I had applied for fellowship in 2022, and it began in 2023.

When it concluded, I hoped for stability—not prestige or recognition, but a sustainable footing for the work I’ve been committed to throughout my adult life: showing up for community. That commitment has not always been reciprocal. Still, I believed that learning more about institutional systems—how museums function, how decisions are made—might allow me to use my voice to make space for others, while perhaps making a small, sustainable space for myself.

At the nearing of concluding that fellowship, I brought my child with me—recognizing how rarely we had been together during such an important transition in her life. She was becoming an adult, and time felt both precious and fleeting.

Although much of that trip was filled with research, site visits, and educational moments, there were brief glimmers where we slowed. We laughed. We noticed how even when we are physically still, we are both so often in constant motion—thinking, planning, carrying responsibility.

Those moments were a gift. A rare experience of respite. Something I didn’t realize how deeply we both needed.

That stability I hoped for after the fellowship did not arrive.

I’m making peace with that now. Slowly. Without anger and with less frustration. My light will not be diminished.

What I didn’t anticipate in 2022—when I applied for the fellowship—was how severely the field would shift by 2025. I don’t have a crystal ball, and while this sector has long struggled to be valued, I don’t think anyone could have foreseen this future. The scale and speed of the changes have been disorienting, even for those of us accustomed to uncertainty.

However, this recent grant rejection was especially disappointing because it was tied to my hope of returning more fully to my art making. After years of learning, service, and holding space for others, I was ready to step back into the studio with intention—to let the work lead again.

Even in the more difficult and disappointing experiences, I’ve learned that I still have the capacity to reflect, to grow, and to carry the lessons forward. I’m thankful for that—not because the experience was easy or fair, but because it sharpened my understanding of what I value, what I’m willing to give, and what I can no longer carry alone.

At the same time, art investment has slowed. Support has become more conditional. Without inherited networks, institutional validation, or financial cushioning, sustaining a creative practice feels precarious—even when the work itself is strong and necessary.

I’ve sat on many sides of the grant process—developing programs, reviewing applications, and applying myself. That perspective has taught me that rejection is rarely about merit, and almost never about effort. Still, the absence of feedback leaves artists carrying uncertainty alone.

This is where institutions can do better.

Transparency does not weaken systems--it builds trust. Clearer communication, more openness about processes, and even limited feedback would go a long way toward honoring the labor involved.

And to individuals, I want to say this plainly: your support is not small. Every interaction matters. Every share. Every time you show up. Those moments remind artists that their work lives beyond portals and panels.

I’ll keep applying.
I’ll keep making.
I’ll keep imagining.

I’m also sitting with a harder realization: that even though I’ve lived on my ancestral lands for most of my life, it may be time to move on. I had hoped not to start over completely--to build forward, not begin again. But sometimes continuity doesn’t look the way we imagined.

If we truly value the arts, we must value the people doing the work—not just in language, but in structure, transparency, and sustained care.

Hope still shows up for me.
Even as the path reshapes itself.

And to those who are still willing to help amplify voices that don’t always carry far—those of us who are often unseen, who are less likely to see our work reflected in public spaces—I want to say thank you. Your willingness to listen, to share, to make room, and to stand alongside artists when it’s complicated matters more than you may realize.

Please keep making accessible space for us. Even when it’s uncomfortable. Even when it challenges familiar systems. Even when the work requires patience and care. That commitment—to inclusion that is lived, not just stated—is how trust is built and how futures cange.