Past
Grantees

The AMERICAN COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA, New York City, received $15,000 in support of the participation of New York City and Minnesota emerging composers in the Emerging Composers Project. This Orchestra has been a catalyst for the development of new American symphonic music since its founding 25 years ago. Established by composers for composers, its mission is to discover, produce and present the widest possible spectrum of contemporary orchestral music. The Emerging Composers Project consists of six programmatic components: New Music Reading Sessions and Commission Award, Emerging Composer Fellowships, Commissions, Carnegie Hall Performances, Composers Out Front series and Touring Performances, and the Open Review Program.

AMERICAN OPERA PROJECTS, Brooklyn, New York, received $18,000 to support the First Chance program. American Opera Projects develops, nurtures and produces new American operas and innovative opera projects. It commissions new works from librettists and composers, presents those in workshops, and provides strategically chosen venues for premieres. The First Chance Program provides for composers and librettists, especially those creating opera for the first time, the experience of hearing their works performed by strong casts under skilled directors.

THE SOUTHERN THEATER FOUNDATION, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for ARENA DANCES, received $12,000 in support of the development and production of new work by choreographer Mathew Janczewski. Funds will be used for the development of Bankrupt City Ballad, an ensemble piece based on imagery from the Great Depression. The dance will juxtapose the desperation of poverty with the gaiety and spectacle of dance marathons, or dance derbies, in the 1920s and 1930s. Janczewski will also be working on a new duet, with the working title of Open Eyes, a work that will focus on breath, groundedness and simplicity.

A two-year grant of $40,000 was awarded to THE ASIAN AMERICAN WRITERS WORKSHOP, New York City, to support writing workshops, a journal and a Poetry Mentoring Project. The Workshop supports the creation, development, publication and dissemination of literature by Asians living in America. Its programs include an in-house reading series, a national literary caravan of writers who tour and read, a literary magazine, the Asian Pacific American Journal of poetry and prose, the publication of anthologies and single author books, and workshops, among other activities. During the two years covered by the grant, the Workshop expects to offer 32 workshops serving approximately 350 emerging artists in multiple genres including playwriting, fiction, poetry, performance and short story. The organization hopes to launch a Mentorship program, and may also use Jerome dollars toward the publication of the Asian Pacific American Journal, which includes work by emerging writers.

ALISON AUNE and KIRSTEN AUNE, collaborating artists, Duluth, Minnesota, will spend three weeks in Norway and Sweden exploring Scandinavian textile design through direct contact with historic and contemporary textile designs in museums, galleries, and artists studios. This exposure will bring their work to a new professional level by strengthening their imagery and focus. They will also research exhibition venues.

Photographer JEFFREY AUSTIN will spend three weeks in China completing a documentary project on the effects of the Three Gorges Dam on the regions people. His objective is to increase awareness and offer a more complete picture of a project that is monumental in scale and profound in terms of its impact. Austin will investigate relocation and its effects on the nearly two million people being moved to make way for the dam and reservoir lake that will be created. Austin specializes in documenting issues inherent to Third World and developing countries.

PATRICKS CABARET, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for the BMAGIC ORCHESTRA, received $10,000 in support of a commissioning and performance initiative for emerging jazz composers. The BMagic Orchestra is an ensemble with a nucleus of 12 players, formed in 1998 and led by William Banfield. The Cabaret performances allow for free-flowing interaction among conductor, performers, and audience members. With Jerome funding, the BMagic Orchestra will issue an open call for emerging jazz composers. Three will be selected for commissions. The composers will work with Orchestra musicians to interpret and develop their work. Each new composition and composer will be the focal point of a separate evening of jazz performance at the Cabaret.

BANG ON A CAN, New York City, received a two-year grant of $40,000 in support of emerging composers commissions from the Peoples Commissioning Fund. The organizations mission is to support emerging composers and to make new music accessible and welcoming to audiences and artists. The Peoples Commissioning Fund, a pooled community of more than 300 member commissioners, provides funding for Bang on a Can to commission new works from a field of composers who have submitted sample works for review by the artistic directors. The commissioned works may be performed by the Bang on a Can All-Stars and/or in the annual marathon.

The SCHUBERT CLUB, Saint Paul, Minnesota, serving as fiscal agent for mid-career composer CAROL BARNETT, received $12,000 in support of the recording and pressing of a compact disc of Barnetts music. The CD will be a key component of Barnetts plan to market her works to a larger audience. The grant will cover recording, production and artistic/administrative costs.

DOUG BEASLEY, photographer, will spend ten days in Santa Fe, New Mexico, participating in the workshop In Search of the Spirit: Land and People, taught by Chris Rainier. Rainiers subject matter and concern for the spiritual nature of photography are similar to Beasleys artistic concerns. Beasley is also interested in Rainiers advice on how to further his artistic career and find publishing venues.

MARK BECKER received funding for Romantico, a one-hour documentary about Carmelo and Arturo, two musicians who immigrated illegally to the United States. They came here in order to work and send money home to their families in Mexico. Romantico is about the border and how economic policy colludes with border politics to tear families apart.

ANN AIKO BERGERON, Duluth, Minnesota; professor, choreographer, and director; will travel to New York City for ten days to attend the New York City Tap Festival. This Festival brings together some of the finest tap dance artists in the world to share their talents through master classes, extended technique classes, performances, tap jams, and panel discussions. Bergeron hopes to develop technically and artistically. She especially seeks greater skill in improvisational performance.

MARY BERGS, installation artist, will spend four days at the Hill Monastic Manuscript Library at Saint Johns University in Collegeville, Minnesota. The Library houses one of the largest and most comprehensive archives of Medieval and Renaissance manuscripts in the world. She will study the archives with the intent of creating large-scale installations that explore the visual language of objects. Bergs arranges objects, images, and symbols into narratives in her work. Her primary interest in the manuscripts is in the layouts of the text and images on the pages, not the content of the language.

BLACKLOCK NATURE SANCTUARY, Moose Lake, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $40,000 in support of the Emerging Artist Fellowship Program. Blacklock is dedicated to preserving undeveloped land and providing artists with uninterrupted time and space to develop new work while in residence. It fosters creative growth through direct experience, study and interpretation of nature. Through a competitive selection process, the Sanctuary awards residency fellowships to emerging artists working in the performing, visual and literary arts. In addition to programming on its sanctuary land in Moose Lake, the organization is adding one-week residencies for emerging artists at Cedar Cliffs on Lake Superior.

GREGORY BRANCH received funding for Real-Life Reconciliation, a documentary about four very different people brought together by a brutal murder. Living on different continents, speaking different languages, and being of different racial groups, two committed the murder, and the other two are the parents of the victim. Nevertheless, the four are a family.

THE BRONX MUSEUM OF THE ARTS, Bronx, New York, received $12,000 in support of the 2002-03 Artist in the Marketplace program, which annually provides 36 competitively selected emerging visual artists with career development seminars and an exhibition of their work. During the past 22 years, over 700 artists have participated in this widely praised program, under the direction of Jackie Battenfield. An open call for artists produces a number of applications that are reviewed by the Museums curatorial staff, independent panelists, and Battenfield. Weekly seminars on such topics as gallery representation and management, pricing of work, time management, successful negotiating, legal issues, public art opportunities and commissions, tax issues, curatorial practices, museum policies, and grant writing are presented.

DON BRUNO, designer, Saint Joseph, Minnesota, will travel to China for 18 days to observe Chinese woodblock book printers and contemporary book publishers in order to enhance his ability to create more expressive images. Hes particularly interested in the processes of simplifying and symbolizing ideas. He will visit independent printmakers and bookmakers and has made preliminary contact with the China Cultural Pictorial Press in Beijing, the Guang Qi Research Center in Shanghai, and the Hebei Faith Press in Shijizhuang.

THE BUILDERS ASSOCIATION, New York City, received $10,000 in support of the creation of Alladeen, a performance work, web site, and music video. This experimental, multimedia performance company is led by Founder Marianne Weems, who researches, dramaturgically structures and directs its large-scale theatrical works. Alladeen uses the story of Aladdin as a point of departure, and as a source for cross-cultural collaboration with the London-based South Asian company Moti Roti. Alladeen highlights the philosophical issues of media and technology as they affect global culture, and bridge the first and third worlds. It will focus on the lives of citizens living in hybrid cities where cultures collide.

WALLY CARDONA VENTURES, Brooklyn, New York, received a two-year grant of $24,000 in support of the creation of two new works, Morphmania: Live Remix and a second, untitled piece. Cardona explores the experiential side of dancing and how it lends itself to non-theatrical time-spans. Morphmania: Live Remix is a series of dance performance events, in traditional and alternative venues, combining technology and art in a non-linear continuum. Cardonas work develops from performance to performance. He intends to exhibit that process in performance rather than keeping it a private act before the curtain goes up.

Nonfiction writer DOUGLAS CARLSON, Moorhead, will travel to Jamestown, New York, for two weeks to conduct research at the Roger Tory Peterson Institute. Carlson is writing a biography of naturalist/artist Roger Tory Peterson. Peterson is the author of the 1934 book A Field Guide to the Birds, which provided a method for identifying species of living birds and thus established a popular audience for bird watching. Carlsons biography will tell the story of Petersons life, ideas, and passions as set against the backdrop of his Field Guide.