Past
Grantees

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.

CAVE CANEM, New York City, received $17,750 to support the participation of emerging poets from Minnesota and New York City in the 2002 Summer Retreat, two New York City Poetry Workshops, and a Master Class in Minnesota. These programs promote the artistic and professional development of emerging African-American poets through rigorous critique, opportunities to share their work with the public, and membership in a community of writers who encourage and stimulate their work.

The CENTER FOR INDEPENDENT ARTISTS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $10,000 to support the New York presentation at the Asia Society of the Zaraawar Mistry play Sohrab and Rustum. The Center for Independent Artists was founded in early 2001 to provide individual artists with resources and services so that they might realize their artistic works in their fullest forms. It is committed to fostering diverse cultural perspectives. Funding from the Jerome Foundation in 2001 supported the creation and development of the Mistry play. Sohrab and Rustum is the story of the fateful battle between the warrior Rustum and his son Sohrab, a beloved legend from Persian mythology. Mistrys play intertwines elements of the ancient legend with the story of a contemporary Zoroastrian from Bombay.

PANO PRA MANGA ARTS, a.k.a. CHAMECKILERNER, New York City, received a grant of $8,000 in support of the production of the new work Visible Content. Artistic Directors and choreographers Andrea Lerner and Rosane Chamecki began their collaboration with the shared stubborn necessity to attain and present a bold and transparent physicality through their work, one that would reveal the psychological state of a body. Visible Content portrays the odyssey of a woman as she struggles to confront her fears. The piece explores the transformative and empowering aspects of her horror while exposing her hidden phantoms and vulnerabilities. The work will premiere in New York in early 2003.

A grant was awarded to KATY CHEVIGNY in support of The Class of 72, a documentary film that explores the lives of inmates who were released from Death Row after the Furman vs. Georgia Supreme Court decision in 1972, which found capital punishment to be unconstitutional.

THE CHILDRENS THEATRE COMPANY, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $30,000 in support of Playground, a new-play development program for emerging playwrights. As one of the largest professional theater companies for young people, The Childrens Theatre sets a standard for excellence. It collaborates with New Dramatists, New York City, a national playwrights membership and service organization, on Playground, which introduces playwrights to the challenging world of theater for young people by creating process oriented frameworks for venturing into new territory. Three emerging playwrights will be selected to work with a collaborative partner of their choice to develop new plays. There will be a ten-day Lab at the Childrens Theatre where the playwrights will have access to a full range of developmental resources. The plays will then be presented in staged readings in Minneapolis and New York City.

CREATE!, Brooklyn, New York, serving as fiscal agent for DANZAISA, received a grant of $10,000 in support of new work by choreographer Gabri Christa. Funding will support Dominata, the second installment of the Winti Project, which explores Christas Dutch Caribbean roots. In Dominata, Caribbean domino players come together after a devastating incident to play dominoes and search for community, distraction, and reflection. Christa is collaborating with composer/musician Greg Tate and his Burnt Sugar Arkestra.

Editor and poet CANDYCE CLAYTON will travel to London, England, and Cardiff, Wales, for three weeks to complete work on her second book of poetry, which focuses on the historical, social, mystical, and artistic. She will also complete the draft of an anthology of Welsh women poets, which she is co-editing with Welsh poet Gillian Clarke. Clayton will meet with Clarke in Wales to finalize project details. She will also meet with poets to review the Welsh poetry manuscript, and will meet with an editor at a Welsh press interested in the project.

A grant of $27,000 was awarded to COFFEE HOUSE PRESS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in support of the publication of three books by emerging literary artists, two of whom are residents of Minnesota and New York City. Coffee House Press publishes award-winning writers in beautifully designed books. The Press fulfills its mission by publishing books that advance the craft of writing, books that present the dreams and ambitions of peoples who have been underrepresented in published literature, and books that establish a common ground for all Americans. Funding will be used to publish Memory Jar, New York poet Brenda Coultass first full-length collection of poems, which is scheduled for a spring 2003 release. Funds will also support Foreign Wife Elegy, Minnesota writer Yuko Taniguchis first book, which focuses on the many roles she plays in life as foreigner, woman, wife, daughter, teacher and student.

A grant of $8,000 was awarded to the NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York City, acting as fiscal agent for artist GRISHA COLEMAN, in support of the development of a new piece through a creative co-production at the Banff New Media Institute. Coleman will bring together a group of collaborators of different disciplines to work on Faster Than a Speeding Bullet, a site-specific, time-based work that investigates the effects of technology on an increasingly fast-paced world. Coleman works as a composer, choreographer and performer.