Past
Grantees

Arts Administrator LISA FIRST received funding to travel to Prague, Czechoslovakia, to research and document Czech contemporary dance forms, which will inform her work as the organizer of an international dance festival.

KATHLEEN FLUEGEL, Director of Development for the Weisman Art Museum, will spend three weeks in Belgrade and Zagreb, Yugoslavia, in a learning residency with the Fund for an Open Society. She will learn from non-governmental leaders, offer her skills and experience of twenty years in the independent sector and establish relationships with potential partners for cultural exchanges with the Weisman Art Museum.

The Foundation Center received a $2,000 commitment toward its 1999 operating year.

THE FOUNDRY THEATRE, New York City, received $20,000 in support of developmental commitments to new and emerging writers in its 1999-2000 season. The Foundry, established by Artistic Director Melanie Joseph, is a cross between a producing theater and an artistic think tank. Integral to its mission is to commission, support, develop and produce the work of emerging artists who challenge the ideas of what theater is, and what it can mean. An investment, both creative and financial, in the long-term development of each work has been an important standard that the Foundry strives to sustain.

A two-year grant of $44,000 was awarded to FRANCONIA SCULPTURE PARK, Shafer, Minnesota, in support of programs serving emerging artists. The Park is an outdoor sculpture park, on a 16-acre site, 45 minutes north of the Twin Cities. It provides artists with work space and exhibition opportunities. Franconia actively solicits proposals from individual artists through regional and national contacts. An artistic review committee determines the artists who are invited for residencies. Last year, new works by 29 artists were exhibited on site. In the summers of 1999 and 2000, Franconia will involve at least 33 emerging artists in residencies of varying lengths as they produce new works for the Park.

A first-time grant of $23,547 was given to NEW FRANKLIN ARTWORKS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in support of two exhibitions and capital projects by emerging artists. This organization has been working with the City of Minneapolis for the past two years to renovate the vacant Franklin Theater Building in the Phillips Neighborhood, and reopen it as a multidisciplinary arts center. Eventually, the facility will include a gallery, a theater and a coffee shop. The mission of the entity is to enrich the Phillips Neighborhood in the Twin Cities with a dynamic program in contemporary visual art, arts education, theatrical productions, films and performance events. Two emerging artists will receive commissions to design and construct portions of the building. The two exhibitions supported will feature works by David Rathman and Stevie Rexroth.

GALE GATES ET AL., Brooklyn, New York, received a two-year grant of $30,000 to support the development of new productions. GAle GAtes is an experimental performance ensemble that draws from theater, music, opera, visual and installation art in its creation of performance works. In 1998, the Jerome Foundation's first grant to the company subsidized Tilly Losch, and the presentation of the Salon Series. The next large-scale work, 1839, will continue Michael Counts' exploration of unusual and startling theatrical perspectives. This work takes the form of a dream in which Daguerre, the inventor of the photograph, experiences the explosion of imagery and psychic dislocation that his invention brought into the world. Counts will also undertake an initial research on a new production So Long Ago I Can't Remember, for the following season. There will be a four-part visual arts exhibition series and a series of acoustic performance opportunities for emerging composers and musicians.

CLA GALHANO, recorder player, was awarded a grant to travel to Amsterdam, Holland in order to study with Dutch recorder virtuoso Marion Verbruggen.

Photographer LINDA GAMMELL received funding to travel to London, England to study examples of early botanical references in art and manuscripts at the British Museum and the Royal Botanical Gardens, and to photograph the oldest existing garden of medicinal plants. Gammells photographs often explore the complexity, diversity and identity of the natural world.

The Directors authorized a two-year grant of $15,000 to The Field, New York City, as fiscal agent for KEELEY GARFIELD's Sinister Slapstick, to support the creation and production of two new works, My Sister was a Refugee and Past Caring. These works will be presented in development in 1999-2000 and premiere performances at Dance Theater Workshop in 2000-2001. Through movement, Garfield explores the realm of emotions, senses, and instincts, and the way in which these elements of our internal experience are manifested. Garfield considers herself an archaeologist of the satirical soul, attempting to excavate the myriad places that open up inside as she unearths subterranean sensations, looking for places where laughter and tears hide, and revealing them in poetic and peculiar dance sagas.

Choreographer/dancer GERRY GIROUARD, in collaboration with composer Tod Winkler and lighting designer Stephen Rueff, received support of $9,500 through the fiscal agent sponsorship of the MINNESOTA DANCE ALLIANCE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, to create and present a new work in 1999. Girouards style of choreography is inspired by gymnastics, wall climbing and tumbling. It employs rigorous body contact and appears to suspend gravity. Exploring the potential of angular poles, corners and beams, dancers bound, leap and hang in expressive motion and contact. Winkler turns the performance space into a musical synthesizer, which transforms kinetic movement into percussive sounds, and interprets the amount of movement into ambient sound. Literally, the dancers become the musicians; and the music instantaneously and precisely matches the movement.

ERIC GRAHAM, an arts administrator in New York Mills, received a grant to travel to five rural community art centers in the Central United States to discuss programming, audience development, funding, and other relevant issues.

GREGORY GRAHAM, artist, was awarded a grant to spend time in Ferrara, Italy, the birthplace of the painting movement, Pittura Metafisica, which is referenced in his work. Ferrara was also important to two 20th Century artists that have influenced Grahams paintingthe metaphysical painter Giorgio deChirico and film director Michaelangelo Antonini.

The Jerome Foundation Directors authorized subsidy of $7,500 for the national service and membership organization GRANTMAKERS IN THE ARTS, Seattle, Washington. The purpose of Grantmakers in the Arts is to strengthen arts philanthropy and its role in contributing to a supportive environment for the arts. It provides educational programs for members, conducts research, issues publications and contributes to the national discourse on arts policy.

A two-year grant of $50,000 was authorized for GRAYWOLF PRESS, St. Paul, Minnesota, to support the publication and promotion of new works by emerging authors. Graywolf Press has been publishing creative literature by contemporary writers for over 25 years. Its program includes fiction, poetry, memoir, criticism and creative nonfiction. Selected authors include Barrie Jean Borich, Lawrence Sutin, Nick Flynn, Molly McQuade and Jan Zita Grover.

JAN ZITA GROVER, writer and resident of Duluth, was awarded funding to spend four weeks in Lake of the Woods, Beltrami and Koochiching Counties to visit the sites and repositories of early 20th-Century attempts by the state and settlers to ditch and drain the peatlands and swamp forests of Northern Minnesota. She will incorporate her findings into a book on the subject.

Funding was awarded to traditional musicians ARMANDO GUTIERREZ G. and GUSTAVO LIRA to travel to Mexico City, Guanajuato and Oaxaca, Mexico. Gutierrez G. and Lira will research and visit various communities and celebrations that incorporate indigenous music forms of central Mexico.

Fireworks artist DAVID HALL received a grant to travel to Valencia, Spain to attend the Feast of St. Joseph, which is a seven-day festival that includes fireworks both day and night. He will also travel to Marselle, France, to meet with fireworks artist Pierre Alan-Hubert who works for the Ruggerri Fireworks Company, the oldest in Europe. Hall is investigating the differences between spectacle and performance, community involvement and public art

ZOLI SEUK KIM HALL, writer, will travel to Seoul, Korea, to investigate the circumstances surrounding her adoption in order to further develop her manuscript Portrait of an Orphan's Memoryscape.

Writer and arts administrator ERIN HART was awarded funding to spend three weeks in Ireland conducting primary research on archaeological methods, bog bodies, historic properties, and police procedures, for a novel set in contemporary Ireland.