Past
Grantees

EYE OF THE STORM THEATRE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $17,000 in support of development and production work with emerging playwrights in the 2000-2001 season. This theater produces contemporary and new works with a dual focus of commissioning and producing world premieres by Minnesota writers and producing regional premieres of provocative new plays on the national scene. Jerome funding is directed toward the Playwright Commissioning Program, the Seed the Storm annual series and an active Literary Department that encourages the submission of new scripts.

A commitment of $60,000 was made to FILM/VIDEO ARTS, INC., New York City, in support of a pilot Artist Mentor Project. Film/Video Arts makes the skills and tools of the media arts available to those who might not otherwise have access to them. It provides a fertile environment where aspiring film and video makers can obtain training, rent equipment and edit their projects--all under one roof and at affordable rates. The Artist Mentor Project will offer in-depth guidance, encouragement and production resources to six emerging film and/or video makers of color per year. The program is comprised of two six month workshops led by distinguished film and video makers. The first workshop to be supported by Jerome will be led by mentor Alex Rivera. Each participant will receive funding for and will finish a work. Technical assistance and support will be provided to participants.

The Jerome Foundation Directors authorized a two-year grant of $68,000 to FilmNorth (formerly Independent Feature Project/North), Minneapolis, Minnesota, in collaboration with Intermedia Arts, the Walker Art Center's Film/Video Department and Twin Cities Public Television to support the public television series MNTV. Grant dollars will fund license fees awarded to Minnesota independent film and video artists whose work has been chosen from a competitive field to air on Twin Cities Public Television. Funding also supports the selection process and some broadcast costs. The purpose of the series is to provide professional development for film and video artists in this state, affording them opportunities to have works shown before large television audiences. Four hour-long episodes highlighting the most innovative short films created within the previous 36 months are broadcast annually.

ALYCE FINWALL, a dancer and choreographer, received funding to spend eight weeks in New York City where she will attend the professional training program at the Merce Cunningham Studio. Finwall is a lead company member of Ballet of the Dolls, and is choreographer and founder of her own company, Dance Council.

Choreographer and improvisational dancer MEGAN FLOOD was awarded a grant to spend ten days in Budapest, Hungary to attend the ECITE 2000, the 15th Annual European Contact Improvisation Teachers Exchange. Flood is a dancer in several Twin Cities companies and is also beginning to create her own choreography.

THE FLYING FOOT FORUM, Minneapolis, Minnesota, was founded in 1991 by choreographer Joe Chvala, to reawaken the dormant potential of percussive dance by fleshing out the full scope of its dramatic possibilities. The company stretches existing percussive dance forms such as tap, clogging, step dance, sword dance and Polynesian stick dance into unusual and varied theatrical contexts. Chvala received a two-year grant of $30,000 to support the development of three new works. The first will use percussive dance, puppetry, music, song, nonsense text, percussive sets, props and costumes to tell the story of a hero on a great quest. A second new work will be based on One Thousand and One Arabian Nights, using pop culture as a starting point to comment on and celebrate what it means to be a living, breathing, sensually driven, life loving human being. The last piece, titled Sex Life of the Foot and Shoe, and based on a book of the same title, is a treatise on footwear, feet and sexuality.

FORECAST PUBLIC ARTWORKS, St. Paul, Minnesota, supports the development and appreciation of public art by creating opportunities for artists and communities to explore the public realm, and by producing educational materials to enhance the understanding and growth of public art. Public Art Affairs is a regranting program for emerging Minnesota artists. It supports the development, production and installation of public art projects throughout the state. In the past 10 years, this program has received over 506 applications involving more than 887 artists; and it has responded with funding for 94 projects. It provides financing for public projects and for research and development. A two-year grant of $65,000 was authorized.

THE FOUNDATION CENTER, New York City, received a two-year commitment of $5,000 in general support of its program. Since 1956, The Foundation Center has been making authoritative information on foundations and philanthropy readily accessible to all. New information technologies have given the Center more ways to provide the general public with current information about grantmakers.

THE FOUNDRY THEATRE, New York City, received a two-year commitment of $46,000 in support of its work with emerging creative theater artists. The Foundry is a place where artists receive developmental support, both creative and financial. In addition to producing theater, the Foundry sustains humanities-based discussions of contemporary societal issues and the role of theater in addressing them. Founder Melanie Joseph calls the Foundry a cross between a theater and an artist think-tank. Jerome Foundation funding will support works being developed by W. David Hancock, Carl Hancock Rux, Alice Tuan, Ching Valdez Aran and Ralph Pna.

FRANKLIN ARTWORKS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $22,000 to support exhibitions of works by emerging artists within the 2000-01 exhibition season. This renovated building on Franklin Avenue includes a gallery, offices, storage space and a future 113-seat theater. The organization is working to enrich the Philips Neighborhood in which it is located and to become a vital force in the arts. Artists scheduled for solo exhibitions at Franklin Artworks in the coming season include Shannon Kennedy, Oscar Arrendondo, Wing Young Huie and Shana Kaplow.

NICOLE FRANKLIN was awarded a grant for I Was Made to Love Her, a documentary about young girls who are double-Dutch jump rope athletes. It challenges the notion that girls are not naturally drawn together as a team, as opposed to boys who are conditioned at an early age to play team sports.

BRIAN FRYE, was awarded funding for Wormwood's Dog and Monkey Show, or the Book of Hours, an experimental film that will consist of discarded fragments of film, scraps of leader and laboratory remnants and the remains of half started, abandoned projects by unknown filmmakers-all the residue of a ten to twenty-year period from the early 1950s to the late 1960s, in retrospect the kernel of the American Century, and the period in which the ubiquity of the cinema and the apparent inevitability of American hegemony coincided.

EMILY GOLDBERG, Minneapolis, MN. Goldberg received support for Venus of Mars, a documentary about rock artist Venus de Mars as the eye-catching transgender singer of a Minneapolis glam rock band and her wife negotiate the frontiers of love and gender. On stage, wearing a vinyl corset and stiletto boots, she's Venus, lead singer of the glam rock band All The Pretty Horses. At home in Minneapolis with Lynette, her wife of twenty years, she's Steve. Born male, Venus is transgender. She's "in between" — taking female hormones, but not planning to have sexual reassignment surgery. To some, she's a pioneer, courageously exploring a brave new world of gender identity, free of categorization. To others, she's a freak. Venus of Mars is both the unique coming out story of Venus' gender-redefining journey, and the truly contemporary love story of a couple weathering dramatic changes in uncharted relationship territory.

The Foundation made a grant of $15,000 to GRANTMAKERS IN THE ARTS, Seattle, Washington, in support of the 2000 Grantmakers in the Arts Conference in the Twin Cities. This commitment is above and beyond the Jerome Foundations annual grant to the organization for general operations. The conference theme is The Source, referring literally to the beginnings of the Mississippi, and figuratively to the tributaries that together make art happen: the creativity of artists, the desire to come together in community, and the impulse to give.

HERB GRIKA, an installation artist and teacher, was awarded funding to spend two weeks in Aachen, Germany, to install a major work, comprised of hundreds of pieces, at the Ludwig Forum for International Art in Aachen, as part of an international art exhibition titled Charlemagne 2000. Hell also visit nearby museums and galleries.

INTERMEDIA ARTS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for African-American independent performance artist AUNDARAY GUESS, received $8,000 for the development and production of NAKED. This work started as a linear play about troubling aspects of his life. Through participation in the Exchanges Mentoring Program at Intermedia Arts, the work was transformed. It became an edgy and challenging performance piece, which Guess intends to expand and revise with new scenes addressing important issues such as black/white gay male relationships, homophobia in the black community, the threat of homosexuality to the black family and the schism between black and white gay men.

Support was awarded to W. DAVID HANCOCK, a playwright from St. Peter, Minnesota, to spend six weeks in Argentina where he will conduct research for a new play titled Immaterial Depositions, a work about the systematic erasure of groups of people by a repressive government.

JENNIFER HARDACKER received funding for an experimental video, The Places We Call Familiar, that focuses on the relationship of memory to the places in which they occurred and the importance places have in our feeling of personal history and belonging.

AARON DAVIS HALL, one of Harlems principal centers for the performing arts, is celebrating its 20th anniversary season this year. Jerome funding of $20,000 is directed toward the Fund for New Work, now in its fifth year. The Fund provides space and commissioning monies to creative artists in the form of upfront financing for the development of new works. These works tend to be produced by the Hall in a series titled NewFacesNewVoicesNewVisions. Monies are used for a variety of purposes, including paying performers for rehearsal, renting rehearsal space, mounting workshop productions and commissioning creative collaborators during the conceptual phase. The Fund provides major support for one to three works of emerging artists each season and smaller grants for up to eight artists, some of those for workshop development. Jerome funding supports cash awards/commissions to emerging creative artists.

HARVESTWORKS, New York City, received a two-year grant of $37,000 in support of the Artist-In-Residence Program. The mission of Harvestworks is to support sound and media artists by providing services to artists who use sound and computer technology as creative media. Services include production assistance, education courses, information programs, financial aid and the presentation and distribution of completed works. The Artist-In-Residence Program offers inexpensive or free access to high level computer equipment in state of the art studio facilities. It serves between 9 and 15 artists annually, each of whom is given up to 60 hours in the facility, including studio time and engineers' fees. The Residency Program serves composers, installation artists, film and video artists and digital artists.