It's obviously kind of near and dear to Karin's heart, but why did you want to make the drive over to be here to help send her off into retirement, or as some people call it, preferment? Why was that important to you?

Well, I think it's important to me because Karin has done so much to expand the role of public arts in our state culture and I've become especially aware of that over the last year in working with her and others in her program, the Washington State Arts Commission.

And so it's about this individual, Karin, to honor that, but also I think to honor public arts and that this is a significant occasion that one director is stepping aside and another one is coming in.

So yeah, and I think maybe I feel some gratitude for just how effective Karin has been in this role of arts administrator.

I really learned a lot about what that entails and even more so why we need it because, you know, Us artists, we're scribbling away in the early hours of the morning or late at night or we're in our studio sculpting and so forth.

We're not always the best ones to take our art out into public spaces.

and to have the kind of vision of, oh, wow, what we could look at what we could do with, we put these artists together in this show or in this festival or, and that is a real skill that, this fine woman has and uh and as i say i've really come to appreciate it over the last year watching it in action learning more about it and really just having a a bit of a sense of awe with how many programs the washington state arts commission supports

This program that you're planning, Derek, what is the concept? What will you be doing with these members of the armed forces? And what's, again, the sort of thinking behind this or the motivation?