Past
Grantees

NORMAN COWIE received a grant in support of The Dimension In Which It Reigns Supreme, an hour-long experimental video essay on the US Governments enactment of global military supremacy and its effects on everyday life in the country. The tape will study the Pentagons concept of "full spectrum dominance" to reveal the human cost and social distortions of this policy.

RANDY CROCE, St. Paul, received support for If Stone Could Speak (Se la pietra potessero parlare), a documentary that examines the migration of stonecutters from northern Italy to Barre, Vermont. It emphasizes their struggles to both preserve their traditions and adapt to America, and to cope with working conditions that killed most of them by age 40. The stonecutters (scalpellini) invigorated the arts and culture in their new homeland.

JOSEPH CULTRERA received a grant for Hand of God, a firsthand account of a man abused by a Catholic priest in a Massachusetts town in 1964 as retold by his brother (the filmmaker). The film is also about the Cultreras, a family of Catholics recovering from broken trust, abuse and outright theft. Its a story about fathers given, lost, acquired and assumed.

DANSPACE PROJECT, New York City, received a two-year grant of $55,000 in support of commissions to New York City and/or Minnesota emerging choreographers for new works to be presented at Danspace. Danspace is an international leader in the commissioning and presentation of contemporary dance. Its mission is to stimulate, promote and present challenging new work in dance from a broad range of artistic voices within a distinguished and nurturing environment. It encourages choreographers to take risks and is committed to assisting artists in realizing their creative visions within a professional setting. An open and continuous application process, guided by an advisory council of choreographers, enables Executive Director Laurie Uprichard to determine the emerging choreographers who receive Jerome-supported commissions. Since inception in 1993-94, Danspace Project's commissioning initiative has supported the creation of 237 new works, often in collaboration with national and international colleagues.

The NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York City, acting as fiscal agent for artist KYLE DECAMP, received $10,000 in support of the creation, development and production of new work. This public foundation develops and facilitates programs in all disciplines to benefit the arts community throughout New York State. Kyle deCamp's work is concerned with different modes of creation and performance in the world of art and pop culture. Each focuses on an absent subject in an historical moment. deCamp works with a choreographic/cinematic sensibility to integrate text with movement, image, sound, and light, in metaphoric visual settings. Her newest work, Urban Renewal, or, Planned Abandonment engages the ideas of perception, loss, innocence, experience, and the significance of the buildings people inhabit. It reconstructs a child's experiences growing up; and through her shifting perceptions, invokes a portrait of a city.

BRIAN L. DEHLER, St. Paul, was awarded a grant for Elements of Habitat, a collection of twelve 2-5 minute vignettes that explore the sights and sounds of various habitats in the form of an audio/visual collage that is both structurally rhythmic and socially insightful. It will attempt to challenge perceptions of the locations by examining and re-exposing the defining details of the habitat.

DIXON PLACE, New York City, received $27,000 to support the Mondo Cane! commissioning series and the presentation of works-in-progress by emerging artists in curated programs and festivals. Dixon Place supports the creative process by presenting original performance and literary works at all stages of development. An artistic laboratory with an audience, Dixon Place enables artists to make challenging and questioning works that push the limits of artistic expression. The Mondo Cane! commissions of new work from emerging, artists provide one to three months of free workshop time for each artist to develop and set a piece, plus a two to three week performance run. Each year, four to seven artists or groups receive commissions, more than half of whom represent minority perspectives. Artists are also given technical assistance; marketing support; fees for designers, directors and performers; and subsidy for production materials.

Jerome Foundation Directors authorized an 18-month grant of $22,500 to the DULUTH ART INSTITUTE, Duluth, Minnesota, in support of the participation of emerging artists in the exhibition program. The Institute is a non-collecting visual art center whose mission is to enrich daily life with dynamic, innovative visual arts programming. It supports and challenges regional artists with exhibitions and professional development opportunities. The Institute operates in two Duluth sites, the historic Union Depot and the Lincoln Park neighborhood. It annually presents 16 to 18 exhibitions in three galleries, showing approximately 350 artists, and attracting approximately 50,000 visitors. There is an annual membership exhibition as well as the Arrowhead Biennial, which began in 1919. Artists to be featured during the grant period include Po-Lin Tong Kosuth, Michael Cousino, Shannon Cousino, Nathan Budof, Raul Cristancho, Derrick Burbul, Bonnie Bergman, Teresa McCue, Sharon Postance, Suzanne Szucs, and Colin Gatling.

DAN EASTMAN, a theater designer and professor In Winona, will travel to St. Augustine, Trinidad, West Indies, to expand his design and stagecraft skills by way of workshop study with two of the Trinidad Carnivals premier wire formers. Eastman will work with artists who create the twenty foot masks and costumes used during Carnival.

CRAIG EDWARDS, a potter from New London, will spend three weeks in South Korea and Japan to learn more about the forms, kilns and glazes of folk pottery. He's interested in the hand building and wood firing techniques used by the Onggi potters of Korea and the Mengei of Japan. He'll visit kiln sites in five different provinces in Korea, looking at design, construction materials, firing processes, firing materials, and the rhythm and routine of the annual production and firing cycles. He'll visit museums, and the leading proponent of the Mengei Movement in Mashiko, Japan.

A grant was awarded to ANGIE ENG in support of Memobile, a new media performance installation that explores the transition of ones perception from a static life to a nomadic one. Using interactive video and sound, Eng will recreate the poetics of movement and ones relation to space through symbols. The title Memobile combines the concept of memory and mobiles. Marcel Duchamp coined the name mobile in French, a pun that suggests both motion and motive for Alexandre Calders kinetic sculpture. Together, memory, motion and motive are concepts the Eng addresses in order to explain how one wanders from place to place to make sense of the world.

JAN ESTEP, an artist based in Minneapolis, will spend three weeks in Norway doing research leading to the creation of a new body of art work related to the ideas of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Estep will visit the Wittgenstein Archives at the University of Bergen and spend some time in Skjolden, Norway. Estep is planning a series of multimedia art works based on the life and philosophy of Wittgenstein. The project is not strictly documentary or biographical but rather an exploration of the relationship between language and meaning, the search for knowledge, and the desire to articulate things that resist articulation. While the trip is research oriented, it is also a form of retreat.

ETHEL'S FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, Sunnyside, New York City, received $8,000 to commission two new compositions. Ethel is emerging as a 21st Century incarnation of the classical string quartet model, using the tastes, talents and experiences of its four classically trained musicians to explore new possibilities in string quartet performance, and to forge a repertoire unencumbered by convention, genre or style. Ethel's philosophy and aesthetic encompass the improvisational and theatrical. The repertoire comes from three sources: self-compositions, commissioned works, and group selected pieces. Jerome dollars will support a group composition and a new work by composer John King. Ethel's collaborative compositional process will produce a double quartet involving a second four-member ensemble. EG(o) will be developed and premiered with gutbucket. John King will use cutting-edge technology and improvisation to build a relationship between how the music is played and how computer processing reacts and responds to a performance. The work will be rhythmically driven and sonically experimental.

EYEBEAM, INC., Brooklyn, New York, received $15,000 in support of the participation of emerging artists in its Artist in Residence Program. Eyebeam supports the creation and presentation of art works produced with digital technologies, expands the public's appreciation of new media art through education programs and exhibitions, and researches and develops new technologies that catalyze the creation of tools and art works. The Artist in Residence Program is a multidisciplinary initiative that supports the creation, development and presentation of new works made with digital tools by emerging artists. Twice a year, a Selection Committee chooses artists for five-month residencies. Artists receive stipends; access to cutting-edge tools; technical support from Eyebeam staff; production help from apprentices; and options to participate in group exhibitions, open studios and other public presentations. Residents are empowered to develop multidisciplinary work that ranges from moving image, sound and physical computing works to technical prototypes, performances and workshops.

Arts writer, critic and editor MICHAEL FALLON, St. Paul, will spend three weeks in Denver, Atlanta and Pittsburgh to study the phenomenon of the neglected artist by focusing upon three unrecognized but skilled artists in these locations. These are talented visual artists who've worked for decades without attaining success. He will study the causes and effects of the situation. He intends to write about what he discovers in a series of critical essays/profiles, and to explore what the social phenomenon of neglected artists may mean to the future of cultural production in this country. He believes that these artists efforts to continue producing despite their inability to make money to survive from their art reveals a glimpse of the creative soul of humanity, something he ever seeks to understand as a writer on art.

FilmNorth (formerly Independent Filmmaker Project Minnesota), Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $64,000 in support of MNTV. IFP Minneapolis/St. Paul supports and promotes the work of artists who create screenplays, film, video and photography. MNTV provides a television broadcast venue for makers of short film and video work, and nurtures audiences for that work. This program is undertaken collaboratively by IFP Minneapolis/St. Paul, Intermedia Arts, Twin Cities Public Television, and the Walker Art Center's Film/Video Program. MNTV is broadcast on Twin Cities Public Television in hour-long episodes highlighting new and creative short works made by Minnesota film and video artists within the previous 18 months. The curated program is surrounded by interstitial materials that include interviews with the makers and profiles of individuals, activities and organizations, which contribute to a vibrant media arts community.

FilmNorth (formerly Independent Filmmaker Project Minnesota), Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $40,000 in support of programs and services for emerging media artists and photographers. This arts service organization supports emerging, intermediate and advanced independent media artists and photographers. Services and programs encompass screenings, education, free or discounted film stock and processing, consultations, facilities, equipment access, exhibitions, events, regrant programs for independent media artists, a fiscal sponsorship program, and an annual film festival focusing on the work of regional media artists.

LISA FIRST, a Minneapolis-based arts administrator and dance presenter, will travel to Hungary, Slovak and Czech Republics, and Berlin, Germany, to increase her expertise in Central and Eastern European modern/contemporary dance forms. First will meet with several Central European dance professionals. This investigation will inform Firsts role as an international dance organizer preparing a Central European/Minneapolis Dance Exchange Project.

FORECAST PUBLIC ARTWORKS, St. Paul, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $65,000 in continued support of the Public Art Affairs Program. FORECAST's mission is to strengthen and advance the field of public art locally, regionally and nationally by expanding participation, supporting artists, informing audiences, and assisting communities. The Public Art Affairs Program, in operation since 1989, awards funds to emerging Minnesota artists and encourages them to consider public venues for creative exploration, offering them increased public recognition and access to expertise to ensure successful projects. FORECAST believes that the resulting projects enrich neighborhoods and excite audiences with an immediate impact that traditional art venues have a hard time duplicating. Funding is available in three categories: research and development of projects, public project grants, and a partner public project grant. An open application process with panel review results in the selection of artists and projects.

The Jerome Foundation made a two-year commitment of $3,000 to THE FOUNDATION CENTER, New York City, in general support of its programs and services. The Foundation Center is the nation's leading authority on philanthropy. It is dedicated to serving grantseekers, grantmakers, researchers, policy makers, the media and the general public. Its mission is to strengthen the nonprofit sector by advancing knowledge about philanthropy in the United States.