JAMES So would not call himself an artist, but he can, and does, draw lines. And the Secretary of Recreation and Culture has every intention of drawing a very thick, dark, line if this afternoon's meeting of the Bills Committee does not come out in favour of the Government when it discusses the future of the Arts Development Council.
What a sizeable, and vociferous, proportion of the arts community wants is to vote on people representing the arts and who decide on who is to receive the $40 million worth of government funding set aside for the territory's cultural enjoyment.
The trouble is that they are not able to agree on how to define an artist - and so are still debating about who should have the right to vote.
'We still have a few technical hitches,' admitted a member of the provisional Arts Development Council, Yu Shu-tak, who will be at the meeting today.
Mr Yu, a former art teacher and now subject officer for public examinations in arts subjects, said he was convinced that elections were the fairest and best way to proceed.
He said there should be voting in the separate areas of art educators, visual arts, music, dance, drama and art administrators. Arts critics were out of the equation, he said, because 'anyone can be an art critic'.