Past
Grantees

A grant was awarded to filmmaker KELLY NATHE to travel for six weeks in Sarajevo and Eastern Bosnia to develop her documentary filmmaking skills under the guidance of photojournalist James Rexroad, through a program of the International Film and Television Workshop, Portland, Maine.

NEW DRAMATISTS, New York City, founded in 1949, gives member writers the tools they needtime, generous theater space, a pool of talented and experienced actors and directors, writing equipment, meeting space and a gifted peer communityto grow artistically and strengthen their commitment to theater. A nationally competitive selection process brings five to seven new writers to the organization each year to join a current membership of 39 playwrights. A portion of the Jerome Foundation grant of $25,000 is designated for the Composer-Librettist Studio, a learning laboratory that fosters collaboration among playwrights and composers. The goal is a greater understanding of the collaborative process of music-theater creation, and the seeding of potential partnerships that may evolve to enrich the art form. Jerome funding was also authorized for emerging playwright development activities, from commissions through readings, workshops and professional counsel.

First-time grant recipient NEW GEORGES THEATER COMPANY, New York City, received $10,000 in support of the development of new theatrical works by emerging playwrights in 1999. New Georges was founded eight years ago by women actors confronting the scarcity of substantive roles for women. The Room, a multi-use workspace, houses readings, small-scale workshop presentations, rehearsals and artists gatherings. The organization cultivates a diverse, growing network of affiliated artists. The organization looks for works that employ the full creative power of theatervigorous use of language, strong images, and a sense that anything can happento tell compelling stories.

THE NEW GROUP, New York City, received $15,000 to support the mainstage production of Cranes by Dimitri Lipkin and literary programs in the 1999-2000 season. The New Group aims to present provocative new plays confronting contemporary issues. The Literary Department handles a variety of functions and scouting responsibilities for the theater. The Playwrights Unit is a writers' collective that meets weekly. There is a new play reading series. This season, The New Group is launching a workshop series to investigate works-in-progress in a closed rehearsal setting. This provides a steppingstone for scripts already at an advanced stage but not quite ready for production.

A grant of $32,000, over two years, was awarded to NEW RADIO AND PERFORMING ARTS, New York City, in support of emerging artists commissions within the Turbulence project. New Radio and Performing Arts was founded in 1981 to stimulate and advance the publics awareness of innovative work in the arts by producing experimental work for radio and live performance. Now entering its fourth year, Turbulence commissions emerging and established artists to develop new works that explore the specific characteristics of the World Wide Web and make use of multimedia and on-line technologies. Turbulence artists represent a variety of disciplines, and work from a variety of cultural and aesthetic backgrounds. This is more than a commissioning and distribution project. Turbulence artists meet regularly and contribute to the overall development of the site, sharing knowledge and assisting one another in the development of individual projects.

The Jerome Foundation made a two-year grant of $80,000 in support of the Bessie Schnberg/First Light Commissioning Program of DANCE THEATER WORKSHOP, New York City. Dance Theater Workshop is a leading contemporary arts organization devoted to connecting artists with audiences. DTW works to identify and encourage talented and culturally diverse artists and companies; to stimulate and develop a broader audience for these artists and their work; and to create opportunities for artists to participate in an interactive community laboratory for the working imagination and its essential, practical application to the world. This program provides funds to emerging choreographers and performance artists to make new work for presentation at DTW.

Wilderness guide and writer JUDITH NIEMI received a grant to spend three weeks in Pelly Bay, Nunavut, Canada, taking part in a sea kayak tour guided by Inuit hunters and living in an Inuit village. Niemis writing often deals with being an outsider in a particular culture.

Dance instructor MARY NOEL, a resident of Crookston, will travel to New York City and Buffalo, New York, to see a Broadway musical and to attend Dance Masters of America, a dance teacher accreditation program.

The NORTHERN CLAY CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a $5,000 grant in support of the exhibition Revelations of the African Potter, a selection of extraordinary historical and contemporary African pots from two private collections in Chicago and Iowa. Douglas Dawson, a potter who is guest curating the exhibition, owns the Chicago-based collection. The Northern Clay Center will offer a two-day workshop led by Sana Musasama, a ceramic artist who lives in New York City and who has worked extensively with Yoruba womens collectives in West Africa. This is a strategic initiative designed to broaden participation in the Northern Clay Centers programming and provide an exemplary service to the Twin Cities community. Subsidized workshop slots will be reserved for emerging African-American artists. There will be a public lecture in conjunction with the workshop.

The NORTHERN CLAY CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $25,000 to continue the Jerome Artists Project grants in the year 2000. The Clay Center promotes excellence in the work of clay artists, provides educational opportunities for artists in the community and encourages the public's appreciation and understanding of the ceramic arts. The Clay Center administers a regranting program in which emerging ceramic artists submit applications, reviewed by a jury, for grants of $6,000. Purposes include experimenting with new techniques and materials, working or studying with a mentor, bringing a respected figure to Minnesota to critique work, purchasing equipment to facilitate an aesthetic or technical investigation, renting studio space, subsidizing time working in the studio, purchase supplies, collaborating with other artists, pursuing education and exhibition opportunities and travel. It is ordinarily the case that at the end of the project year, a culminating exhibition features work made by project grant recipients.

THE FIELD, a New York City-based service organization supporting the work of independent artists, served as fiscal agent/sponsor for a proposal from TERE OCONNOR DANCE. The Jerome Foundation Directors awarded a two-year grant of $24,000 to The Field in support of the development and production of new work in 1999. Tere OConnor Dance was founded in 1987. OConnor challenges the boundaries of dance through a dense eclectic movement style filled with reference and nuance, and a fierce commitment to encountering stark emotional territory. His persistent themes include the unveiling of an inner emotional dialogue, and the frailty and nobility of an individual life accented by a frequently hilarious sense of humor. Funds will primarily support a new evening-length work in which OConnor continues to develop a synthesis of language and movement. The predominant themes are the changes in human nature provoked by technology, and the way that personal anger grows into political fervor.

Performance Space 122, New York City, acting as fiscal agent for independent choreographer Cynthia Oliver, received a grant of $10,000 toward the development and production of a new work entitled SHEMAD. Oliver's new work will utilize the mythologies behind madness and women, address methods that are designed to manage women who are "certifiably" mad by the standards of the day, and will explore the ways in which categories of speech are employed to determine women who do not behave as mad.

Artist and professor PATRICIA OLSON will travel to Pompeii, Italy, to visit the ancient Roman murals at the Villa of the Mysteries, for inspiration, reflection and the collection of materials for an expanded body of work based on her previous series, The Mystery Paintings.

The new literary arts building Open Book, Minneapolis, Minnesota, was awarded funding of $60,000 over a two-year period in support of emerging artist projects and interventions. This grant will provide opportunities for artists to encounter the building and imagine and create interventions utilizing existing and/or salvaged materials. The works designed by emerging artists will receive high visibility in the literary center that will attract writers, book artists, readers, students and general audiences. Open Book, a literary center scheduled to open in 2000, is a collaboration between The Loft, Milkweed Editions and Minnesota Center for Book Arts.

ST. LUKE'S Chamber Ensemble, New York City, was awarded a grant of $24,000 to support the Second Helpings series at the Dia Center for the Arts. St. Luke's is committed to contemporary composers and new music programming. This series presents repeat performances of recently written works and premiere performance of new works. The grant from the Jerome Foundation will support three commissions to emerging composers.

P.S. 1 CONTEMPORARY ARTS CENTER, Long Island City, received $14,000 to support emerging artists expenses in creating, fabricating and installing works for the exhibition Some Young New Yorkers III. Twice a year, the curators at the newly reopened P.S. 1 showcase the work of emerging New York City artists. The third installment in this series opens in January of 1999. The exhibition is a platform on which young, relatively inexperienced artists may show their work, selected by top international curators, in a space that tells the story of discovery again and again. This particular show focuses on collaboratives, artists collectives and interdisciplinary projects involving more than one artist.

GREG PAK received a grant for Brother Killer Wolf, a feature-length documentary that tells the stories of several very different Americans whose lives are intertwined with wolves, including: members of the Nez Perce tribe, who manage the Idaho wolf reintroduction program; a wolf trapper in Alaska; a cattle rancher dealing with wolf depredation; a biologist studying a wolf pack; an activist involved in the save-the-wolf campaign; and a suburban owner of a wolf-dog hybrid.

SARAH PENMAN, photographer and filmmaker, was awarded funding to travel to Costa Rica with a delegation of North American Indians to meet with traditional Native leaders. Penman will include South and Central American Indians in a ten-year photography/essay project.

PENUMBRA THEATRE, St. Paul, Minnesota, received a grant of $49,000, of which $34,000 was designated for the Late Night Series and $15,000 for Cornerstone staged readings. Penumbra presents artistically excellent productions that respectfully and accurately reflect the richness, diversity and reality of the African-American experience. The Cornerstone project develops and supports new work by African-American playwrights. It includes script development, readings, workshops and productions. Jerome funding will enable Penumbra to produce three staged or semi-staged readings in the current season. Piloted in 1997, the Late Night Series brings a new group of voices to Penumbra in the form of cutting edge performance work. This season, Late Night will be programming on nine weekends, under the direction of Laurie Carlos.

The Jerome Foundation authorized a grant of $10,000 to the MINNESOTA DANCE ALLIANCE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, as fiscal agent for choreographer JELENA PETROVIC. Petrovic will use the funds to create and present new, larger ensemble work in 1999. One will be a duet with dancer Eric Boone, focusing on partnering in a complex physical vocabulary. She'll create a second section for a duet titled We Begin Standing. Finally, she'll create a theatrical group piece centered on the themes of self-promotion, self-love and self-betrayal. This is the second grant the Foundation has made to Petrovic for the development of new work.