Past
Grantees

TROIKA RANCH, Brooklyn, New York, received $8,000 to support the creation and production of The Memory of the Future, a work that combines dance, theater, video projections, and interactive computer technology. Through the abstracted stories and experiences of five imagined characters, the work explores how we process the events of our lives, both beautiful and terrible, into memories that accumulate to define the essence of who we are as individuals and as a community. Choreographer Dawn Stoppiello and composer Mark Coniglio direct Troika Ranch. Their mission is to create works that fuse traditional elements of dance, music and theater performances with digital computer technology.

Playwright KA VANG will travel to Thailand, Laos, Burma, and China for 20 days to research traditional Hmong communities and folklore so she can incorporate more complex and authentic Hmong characters and issues into her plays. Vang often writes about identity and heritage and feels that her lack of knowledge about Hmong identities hinders her from developing complex and real characters.

KANG VANG, St. Paul, MN, received support for Miskas American, a docudrama that takes place before and during the court trials of an older Hmong man named Wa Her Yang, who is convicted of murdering his wife. During the proceedings, Yang finds solace through his lawyer, a young man.

VSA ARTS OF MINNESOTA, Minneapolis, Minnesota, was awarded a two-year grant of $35,000 in support of services to professional artists living with disabilities and the Minnesota Artist Recognition Grant Program. The organizations mission is to make the arts accessible to people with all types of disabilities throughout Minnesota. VSA arts provides information and referral resources, training, community awareness of arts access, and advocacy. It also provides direct arts programming opportunities for people with disabilities. The Artist Recognition Grant Program awards grants of $1,000 to six competitively selected artists each year. VSA arts presents a culminating exhibit of work by the selected visual artists, and readings and/or performances by the literary and performing artists.

Directors authorized a two-year grant of $40,000 to the WALKER ART CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in support of Emerging Artists/Emergent Medium 3: The Translocal, a commissioning project that allows the Walker to identify emerging artists whose work is made on-line and whose commissioned projects will be placed in the Walkers on-line gallery at www.walkerart.org/gallery9/. By highlighting and supporting the work of emerging new media artists, the Walker intends to create a supportive and critical context that will establish individual artists of merit and advance new media as a serious avenue of creative expression. The focus of the 2002 program is the translocal, the act of specifying an individual local environment and situating it in a global context. The topography of the translocal is a network of connected nodes rather than a center and peripheral sites.

PERFORMANCE SPACE 122, New York City, acting as fiscal agent for CLAUDE WAMPLER, received a grant of $12,000 in support of her creation and production of work. Wamplers art combines video, painting, photography, lighting, sculpture, costume, and text to explore the blending of performance and visual expression. Funding will be used for the development of Infiltration and Present Absence. Both pieces continue her interest in expanding the focal point of performance, shifting the audiences gaze from center stage to peripheral activities. Wampler will eliminate the conventional stage platform in favor of a performance that is distributed throughout an arts complex.

A grant of $33,000 was made to the DALE WARLAND SINGERS, Saint Paul, Minnesota, in support of the Choral Ventures program. This professional choral ensemble performs music from five centuries, and is known for its extensive commissioning program and commitment to contemporary music. Choral Ventures is an annual performance and commissioning initiative open to emerging composers. Four competitively selected composers receive stipends to create short works for a reading session and participate in a career development workshop. One of the four composers is selected for a full commission and works closely with Warland to prepare the piece for performance at an annual subscription concert.

WHITE COLUMNS, New York City, was awarded a grant of $30,000 in support of artists services and the participation of emerging artists in exhibition programs. White Columns identifies significant young visual artists and encourages their creative development through group and solo exhibitions, a curated slide file, and public programs. Annually, White Columns presents six thematic group shows featuring the work of more than 40 artists and 12 White Room solo-exhibitions of works by artists without commercial representation.

Book artist JODY WILLIAMS will spend 14 days at Rutgers University attending the 16th annual Rutgers Camden Summer Writers Conference where she will learn how to write more effectively and efficiently. Williams formal training has been in the visual aspect of books, mostly printmaking and bookbinding. Her training in writing is limited. She believes it will be instructive for her to take her texts out of the book context and see how they hold up in a literary setting. She will refine written texts for two major book projects.

MARK WOJAHN, St. Paul, MN, was awarded funding for What America Needs 2002, an experimental documentary about the United States, a sequel to What America Needs 1994. The filmmaker will travel from Manhattan to San Francisco asking people the question, What do you think America needs?

The WOMENS PROJECT & PRODUCTIONS, New York City, received $22,000 to support the participation of emerging playwrights in the 2002-03 Developmental Theater Program. The Womens Project & Productions is dedicated to the development and production of new plays written by women. It fosters emerging artists through the Playwrights Lab, the Directors Forum, The First Looks Reading Series, workshops, and occasional commissions. The Playwrights Lab is led by Literary Manager Karen Keagle as a forum for early and mid-career playwrights to develop their work. The First Looks Reading Series typically presents between 15 and 20 rehearsed readings of new plays each season.

THE FIELD, New York City, acting as fiscal agent for ELLIS WOOD/WOOD DANCE, received a two-year grant of $20,000 to support the development and production of new work. In the first year, funding will support the creation and work-in-progress showing of A.F.E.W. Girls in the Mud, which will premiere during the second year of the grant period. A.F.E.W. highlights aspects of female identity as they relate to the elements of air, fire, earth and water. Wood creates dances that focus on womens issues, and in particular, gender politics.

KIMBERLY WOOD received funding for On My Knees, a narrative film that creates a portrait of Victorian maid-of-all-work Hannah Cullwick, drawing from 17 years of her diaries. Themes of class, race, and gender are explored vis--vis Cullwicks relationship to her employer and her upper class secret paramour.

The NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York City, acting as fiscal agent for artist YASUKO YOKOSHI, received a grant of $10,000 to support the developmental stage of Yokoshis new work Shuffle. Yokoshi creates highly performative dance works that deliver cutting edge theatrical drama by revealing the magic of transformation through multiple characters who have a cartoon-like clarity. Shuffle is a dance/theater/multimedia performance piece that will be constructed in several episodes. Some are based on true personal stories, and will be juxtaposed to an exploration of Kojiki, an ancient Japanese creation mythology. Shuffle will premiere in the spring of 2003 in New York City.

A grant was awarded to SUSAN SHIVA YOONESSI in support of The Classifieds: Vern, a quirky documentary that follows the story of a painter, Vern Koski, who was posthumously immortalized on canvas after a 24-year-old conceptual artist placed a classified ad looking for someone to "donate their ashes to art." Vern's wife (an aspiring actress) Marcia Koski answered the ad and offered the remains of her cremated husband. Never recognized for his art during his life, ironically, Vern Koski became "his on life's work."

The ZENON DANCE COMPANY AND SCHOOL, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $48,000 in support of the residencies of six emerging New York City and Minnesota choreographers who will create new works for the Zenon Company. Zenon sustains an artistically excellent, professional dance company that presents the commissioned works of emerging and locally, nationally and internationally recognized modern and jazz choreographers. Choreographers are selected by Artistic Director Linda Andrews and will include, during the duration of this grant, Wynn Fricke, Mark Haim, Keely Garfield, Tere OConnor and Mathew Janczewski.

Marina Zurkow was awarded a grant in support of Little Miss NO, an animated adult fairy tale about boundaries, bohemians, and spiritual materialism. Utilizing 1960's graphic design references, jazz fragments, and concepts of Buddhist philosophy and psychoanalysis, the project stitches together the family, fantasies and nightmares of a little girl who finds out for herself how to speak up and saynot scream"NO." Little Miss NO is vector animated in Flash, and will be distributed on both the Internet and via TV and festivals.

15 HEAD-A THEATRE LAB, St. Paul, Minnesota, received $20,000 to support the creation and production of new work in the 2001-02 season. 15 HEAD is an experimental theater company currently in its fourth season of production. It utilizes a collaborative process to produce plays, operas and musical works marked by highly physical performances and unusual visual styles. It is especially drawn to the integration of text and music. Jerome funding will be directed toward an upcoming production written and directed by Jon Leiseth and titled The Fairy Tale Project, and for Chad Sylvains The Velocity Project.

3 LEGGED RACE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $18,000 in support of the participation of emerging creative artists in Summer Blizzard, Field/Play, and Hand Driven. The mission of 3 Legged Race is to accelerate the invention of new theater and performance by investing in artists and pursuing with them the most compelling collaborative adventures. It supports work in dance, puppetry, theater, and circus arts. Summer Blizzard is a performance event that supports highly physical/spectacle-oriented works at various stages in their creative process. Field/Play will commission five artists, working in collaborative teams, to investigate the fool, the clown, and the buffoon in the development of new works. Hand Driven is a performance workshop devoted to puppetry/object theater. Three to five artists will be invited to work side by side on the development of new pieces for this workshop.

Jerome Foundation Directors authorized a grant of $10,000 to 3-LEGGED DOG, New York City, in emergency support following the destruction of 3-Legged Dogs office and the loss of its physical assets. 3-Legged Dog is an experimental, multidisciplinary group that produces original works in theater, performance, media, and hybrid forms.