Past
Grantees

SKEWED VISIONS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $12,500 in support of the creation and production of a three-part site-specific work. This performance company specializes in works engaging in and engaged by their physical environments. It uses interdisciplinary approaches to create strongly visual works, seeking modes of seeing or conceiving that deviate from the linear. Jerome subsidy is directed toward Days and Nights, which includes three segments: The Hidden Room, A Quiet Ambition, and Time For Bed. They explore landscapes of myth and meaning, and are linked by the use of a common space-the Witch's Hat Water Tower in the Prospect Park Neighborhood of Minneapolis. Written and directed by Glgn Kayim, The Hidden Room is based on the life and art of Jewish/Ukrainian artist/author and Holocaust victim Bruno Schultz. Charles Campbell, collaborating with performance artist Cherri Macht, will develop A Quiet Ambition as an imagistic exploration of personal and social alienation as manifested in contemporary society. Time For Bed, created and directed by Sean Kelley-Pegg, is a cyclic, continuous film work about a watcher and the watcher's imagination.

SMACK MELLON STUDIOS, Brooklyn, New York, nurtures and supports emerging, under-recognized mid-career, and women artists in the creation and exhibition of new work. It provides exhibition opportunities, studio workspace, and access to equipment and technical assistance for the realization of ambitious projects. Jerome support of $14,000 is directed to the Exhibition Program, and within it, group and solo shows featuring the works of emerging artists. The 2005 program begins with an expansive exhibition of drawings by 17 artists. In the fall, the organization celebrates its new location at 92 Plymouth Street with installations created specifically for that space.

NO NAME EXHIBITIONS @ THE SOAP FACTORY, Minneapolis, Minnesota, supports and exhibits the work of emerging visual artists; enhances the public's understanding of and appreciation for artistic expression; and fosters strength and vitality in the arts, cultural and educational communities of the Twin Cities. It occupies an expansive former soap factory and presents four group shows, nine project rooms and six video installation rooms each season. Jerome support of $22,000 was approved for the participation of emerging artists in the exhibition program. The 2005 group exhibitions include Gigantic, a show of art that overwhelms; Art Shanties, a winter show of ice houses and an expanded summer version including a sauna installation; and Afrofuturism, an examination of Black artists' works in the context of the future rather than the past.

SOHO REPERTORY THEATRE, New York City, develops unconventional plays, cultivating new work from first impulse through fully mounted productions. A Jerome Foundation grant of $20,000 over two years was authorized to support artists' fees across a spectrum of play development activities. Development activities include research and development, commissions, staged workshops, and a Writer/Director Lab. Jerome support is directed to emerging playwrights based in New York City and/or Minnesota.

With THE FIELD, New York City, as fiscal sponsor, the Jerome Foundation Directors approved a grant of $9,000 to support ROSEANNE SPRADLIN DANCE. Spradlin's choreographic mission is to awaken audiences to a fuller experience of the body in motion, and to bring audience members into a closer intimacy with themselves. Pay Color, a dance to be premiered this December, constitutes a section of an evening-length work to be completed in 2006. The impetus for Pay Color is to explore the heightening of sensory intake-smell, touch, sound, site and motion-to the point that the experience begins to resemble an altered state of reality. Subjects are made more critically aware of the intense beauty of the world and the inborn rights of human beings while also being exposed to the damage and pain caused by human nature.

Jerome Directors authorized a grant of $16,000 to the TEXTILE CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in support of several programs and services dedicated to emerging artists. The Textile Center promotes excellence in fiber art and preserves textile traditions. Its facility, which opened in 1994, includes a textile gallery and shop, an auditorium and classroom space, a textile library, a dye lab and office space. Jerome dollars are directed toward the exhibition series, which includes a significant number of emerging artists; workshops offered by master visiting artists; access to the dye lab; and related programs and services.

THIRTEEN/WNET NEW YORK, New York City, received a grant of $25,000 in support of stipends for emerging filmmakers whose works are broadcast in Reel New York. This series maintains a position on the cutting edge of the creative film scene, providing a broadcast forum for narrative shorts, documentaries, experimental films, animation and other projects. Reel New York is broadcast twice each week for eight weeks, and has, since inception, presented 205 independent productions. An accompanying web site highlights film and video features, and includes interviews and taped introductions to the films by the filmmakers, a festival calendar, photos, and a list of resources for independent video/filmmakers.

The TRIBECA PERFORMING ARTS CENTER, New York City, received $8,000 in support of its Artists in Residence Program. The TRIBECA Performing Arts Center presents an eclectic mix of theater, music and dance by a variety of artists, many of whom are emerging. The Artists in Residence Program is an ongoing effort to bring emerging New York City-based artists-composers, lyricists, choreographers, directors and writers-together for a year to develop projects that are shared with audiences in an annual Work and Show Festival. Each artist receives a year of rehearsal space via a residency; a stipend to support rehearsal and development; design, production and administrative support; and publicized presentations of works-in-progress.

TRIPLE CANDIE, Harlem, New York, supports the creation and presentation of new work by artists who are under recognized in New York City and who work in unconventional ways. It assists artists in securing the resources they need to create new, ambitious projects; and promotes diversity in the art world by working with artists from a variety of cultural backgrounds. To date, it has mounted 33 exhibitions featuring the art work of 140 artists for an audience of more than 15,000 people. Jerome funding of $8,000 will be directed to the exhibitions in its Project Space of works by three New York City-based emerging artists. Selected by the internationally celebrated artist Nari Ward, the artists will create ambitious new work that takes into consideration the architectural characteristics of the Project Space.

TROIKA RANCH, Brooklyn, New York, received $10,000 in support of the creation and production of 16(r)evolutions. Troika Ranch is a collaborative engaging choreographer Dawn Stoppiello and composer Mark Coniglio, who create works that fuse traditional elements of dance, music and theater performances with digital computer technology. The new evening-length work 16(r)evolutions will explore the inexorable force of evolution. The work will dramatize a network of evolutionary tension among four characters as they complete a single evolutionary cycle, from the appearance of their species to their extinction.

VOCALESSENCE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $22,000 in support of Essentially Choral 2006. VocalEssence offers education programs, tours internationally, records, broadcasts, provides training for emerging composers writing vocal music, and commissions composers to broaden the experience of today's audiences with new contributions to concert repertoire. Essentially Choral provides a creative, developmental, networking, and educational opportunity for emerging composers interested in writing for chorus. Five composers receive readings of their work, recordings of the rehearsal readings, seminar sessions, and meetings with a senior composer mentor and conductor Philip Brunelle.

VOICE & VISION, New York City, received a two-year grant of $27,000 in support of the ENVISION Retreat and Lab workshop productions of works by emerging playwrights. Voice & Vision seeks to develop and produce vibrant theater works with female artists at the core. Each writer and artistic team is treated individually to define goals and ascertain the resources needed to bring works to their next stage. In 2005-06, the Lab will support the growth of three new works ranging in style, content, aesthetic, and cultural perspective.

JASON WADE was awarded a grant in support of STABBER, an experimental film about an institutionalized man who has been sheltered from society his whole life. He is accidentally left behind when the institution closes and goes on an incredibly violent and surreal journey that takes him from the country to the city, into the forest and ends at the precipice of a large cliff where he hurls himself into the abyss.

WHITE COLUMNS, New York City, received $20,000 in support of the participation of emerging artists in the 2005-06 exhibition season, and the payment of artists' fees. White Columns is a laboratory for exploring new ways of making and displaying art. It identifies visual artists at early points in their careers and encourages their creative and professional development. It seeks to stimulate, support and amplify idiosyncratic voices, engaging those voices in dialogue with each other, and moving that dialogue into the public sphere. The exhibition program includes thematic group shows exploring new ideas and directions in contemporary art and exhibiting 70 to 100 artists each year. The White Rooms offer solo exhibitions to emerging artists. Jerome funding also focuses on New York City and Minnesota artists.

WOMEN'S PROJECT & PRODUCTIONS, New York City, received $22,000 in support of the Developmental Theatre Program. Dedicated to developing and producing women theater artists, the Women's Project seeks progressive and inspiring stories and roles for women and strives to produce plays with diverse, transformational women at their center. Jerome support is dedicated to the development of new work by emerging playwrights, primarily through the Playwrights Lab, new play development and Women's Work. The dual emphasis of the Lab is to nurture the playwright and to develop plays through critical evaluation and dramaturgy. Playwrights are encouraged to take risks and try new styles and approaches. Women's Work is a two-week festival of ten to 12 plays written by women, many of them members of the Lab.

THE FIELD, New York City, acting as fiscal sponsor for ELLIS WOOD DANCE received $10,000 in support of the creation of a new work titled Hurricane Flora: Inferno. Ellis Wood Dance was founded in 1996 with the mission of presenting performance work and developing community projects that focus on bringing the power of dance to a diverse audience. Hurricane Flora: Inferno will explore aspects of female identity as they relate to the four elements of air, fire, earth, and water. The two new sections in progress, Fire and Water, will be combined with the previously completed Air and Earth to create a complete piece that will tour in this country and abroad. The purpose of the work is to lead the audience through an experimental journey of female choice.

A grant in support of Manhattan, Kansas was awarded to TARA WRAY. Manhattan, Kansas is an intensely personal documentary about the filmmaker's relationship with her troubled mother who lives in Hunter, Kansas, a small town with no mental health facilities capable of treating her mother's multiple mental illnesses. The film delves into the complex nature of home, as well as the often complicated ways people, and families, care for one another.

Support was awarded to JAKE YUZNA for OPEN, an unconventional love story about a gay man and transgendered man (born as a woman, but through surgery and hormone treatment transitions into a man) who sleep with each other and discover they are each other's first time with a member of the opposite sex. Yuzna's goal is to build understanding of contemporary fringe culture by creating emotionally compelling and complex characters.

ZEITGEIST, St. Paul, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $27,000 in support of the Zeitgeist/Composer Workshop. A group of musicians animated by a spirit of adventure and collaboration, Zeitgeist presents works of substance with passion and integrity and strives to forge new links between musicians and music lovers through concerts, commissions, recordings, and dialogues with audiences. The Composer Workshop gives emerging composers the opportunity to develop their creative ideas and stretch their artistic boundaries in an environment that celebrates exploration and experimentation. Each composer brings sketches of material he or she would like to develop using Zeitgeist as a compositional laboratory. The workshop takes place over a five-day period in which each composer works directly with the ensemble, composes new material, and attends the working sessions of the other composers.

Minneapolis-based playwright JANET MALIA ALLARD will spend one month in Hawaii at the Kalaupapa Settlement on Molokai and on Oahu. Allard will conduct interviews, attend hula festivals and do historical research on Hawaiian performing arts, gathering raw materials and information to create a new theater piece on the Kalaupapa Settlement, a home for surviving Hansen's disease patients. The play will bring to the stage stories of loss, forced isolation, adaptation, family, struggle and survival.