Past
Grantees

ANNA THOMPSON/DEBORAH LEHMAN/MARY DARNALL, arts administrators at the College of Saint Benedict in St. Joseph, received funding to travel to Chico, California, to meet with Diavalo Dance Theater. Saint Benedict commissioned a new work from this company. Thompson, Lehman, Darnall and Diavolo members will develop dance residency activities to take place at the College in conjunction with the premiere in 2000.

The Jerome Foundation Directors made their first grant to THREAD WAXING SPACE, New York City, in support of the participation of emerging artists in the 1999-2000 season. Thread Waxing is a nonprofit arts and education space whose purpose is to promote and present works of art not ordinarily accessible to the public. It primarily exhibits and presents the works of emerging artists. Its annual operations include exhibitions, performances, readings, musical events, lectures and educational programs. Funding of $13,000 was authorized for the participation of emerging artists in such exhibitions as Foul Play and Achieving Failure--Gym Culture 2000.

AMY TOSCANI, sculptor, received funding in support of an artist residency at Sculpture Space in Utica, New York. She will spend two months in the studio as if it were a research laboratory, exploring process and materials, culminating in two or three large-scale pieces.

CHARISSA UEMURA and JOYCE YAMAMOTO, photographers and writers, will spend time within the Gila River Indian Community in Phoenix, Arizona, documenting the effects of US government action on Japanese American and Native people. Japanese American concentration camps were placed on Indian reservations during World War II. The artists envision producing several pieces from this experience, including an exhibit for the Minnesota Historical Societys Day of Remembrance in February 2000.

NITA VELO of Rothsay was awarded a grant to attend the Song School in Lyons, Colorado, to enrich her skills as a songwriter and performer.

VOICE & VISION, New York City, received a two-year grant of $30,000 toward the development of new work. This multifaceted theater organization emphasizes work by women. Jerome funding will support Envision, a two-year developmental theater process commencing with a summer retreat for women theater artists to be held in June of 2000, followed by an artists' laboratory in New York City in the 2000-2001 season. It is expected that three to five projects will emanate from the retreat and the laboratory, with the final shapes determined by the core artists.

The WALKER ART CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, sustains an artistic program that champions the new and untested while charting groundbreaking historical research into the work of 20th Century masters. Programs in the visual, performing and media arts support and present some of the most important artists and ideas of our time. Funding of $34,000, over two years, was authorized for the Dialogues exhibition program. The Walker invites three emerging artists from the Twin Cities and three from New York City to exhibit in pairs in three shows in Gallery 7. The artists are given commissioning fees and funds for materials, as well as transportation subsidy and per diems to visit each others studios to explore the possibility of collaborations. The shows are accompanied by full-color mini-catalogs documenting the works of the artists and including critical texts by the curator, as well as biographies and interviews. The first Dialogues exhibition covered by this grant features works by Paul Beatty and Wing Young Huie. The other pairings have yet to be determined.

CONNIE WANEK, a writer based in Duluth, received a grant to travel to Las Cruces, New Mexico, for study and reflection, and to stimulate new work related to current themes in her poetry.

THE DALE WARLAND SINGERS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $64,000 in continued support of the New Choral Music Program. This program draws submissions from emerging composers throughout the country, with an emphasis on those residing in Minnesota or New York City. Four finalists receive a stipend to complete a five to seven-minute work which is performed in a reading session by The Dale Warland Singers. Each year one of the four is commissioned to create a 12 to 20-minute composition which is premiered as part of the choral ensembles annual season The composers are also involved in a variety of activities designed to strengthen their work and professional development as composers.

With the fiscal sponsorship of the NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York City, composer ANDREW WARSHAW received funding to develop The Sparks, The Ringing: An African-American Jewish Oratorio. This evening-length music-theater piece for full choirs of African-American men and boys, and Jewish men and boys, is set in the fever-dream of an African-American musicologist who has fathered a Jewish child. The libretto ranges over 5,000 years of Jewish, African and African-American history, and explores the musicologist's visions from Pharaonic Egypt to Harlem of the early 20th Century. The work will be sung in 11 languages by choirs, nearly a dozen soloists and an instrumental ensemble. Jerome support of $8,000 was authorized to continue the development of the piece.

Jazz artist DONALD WASHINGTON will travel to Detroit, Michigan, to conduct a reunion of the Bird-Trane-SCO-Now! Ensemble which he founded twenty years ago. The ensemble is named for jazz greats Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Roscoe Mitchell.

SASHA WATERS was awarded support for Life in These Small Hollows, a half-hour documentary about coal field residents in southern West Virginia and their efforts to save their homes from the ruinous effect of mountaintop strip mining.

ANTHONY WHITE will spend three weeks in San Francisco studying shadow craft with Larry Reed, Artistic Director and Master Puppeteer of Shadowlight Productions. White will combine shadow craft with other artistic and theatrical forms to breathe new life into old stories.

Funding of $20,000 was authorized for the WOMEN'S PROJECT & PRODUCTIONS, New York City, in support of developmental theater programs in the 1999-2000 season. Founded in 1978, the Women's Project & Productions nurtures women playwrights and directors, produces their plays in an environment that values their creativity, and cultivates an audience for that work now and into the future. It has presented over 100 full productions and hundreds of readings and workshops. Jerome support subsidizes the participation of emerging playwrights in several of the theater's programs including a rehearsed reading series, a works-in-progress season, a playwrights' lab and Tandem Acts.

JUAN CARLOS MARTINEZ-ZALDIVAR received support for 90 MILES, an intensely personal, short video documentary about the emotional wounds Cubans and Cuban-Americans live with everyday because of the deep divide separating the United States and Cuba.

Independent radio producer JENNY ZANNER was awarded funding for a trip to New York City and Syracuse, New York and Warren, Rhode Island to conduct interviews for an audio documentary, From Repeal to Roe v. Wade: An Oral History of Abortion Providers in New York, 1970-1973.

A commitment of $6,500 was made to the MINNESOTA DANCE ALLIANCE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal sponsor for 10,000 DANCES. 10,000 Dances is a professional, contemporary dance company dedicated to promoting artistic excellence by performing dance works created primarily by company choreographers. Funding was approved for Around the Block Again, a December 1998 concert season. This program concept results in fast-paced and highly diverse selections of dances, distinctively emphasizing the inclusive nature of the selection process. A variety of groups will participate including tap ensembles, Young Dance, break dance and popper groups and 10,000 Dances in choreography

The Jerome Foundation authorized support of $12,000 to 15 HEAD-A THEATRE LAB, based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Funding will underwrite the development and production of an original company-created piece based on Byrons Don Juan. This is an experimental theater lab in its third season of production. There are three artistic core members who use a collaborative creative and rehearsal process to produce plays, operas and musical works distinguished by highly physical performances and unusual visual styles. The founding artistic members define their niche as presenting works marked by creative and stylized staging, accessible experimentation and the choice of scripts and musical works with epic and/or political themes. The Foundations grant recognizes the uniqueness of a creative reinterpretation of classic works.

The NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York City, acting as fiscal agent for 3-LEGGED DOG, received a two-year grant of $30,000 in support of the development and production of new works in the 1998-99 and the 1999-2000 seasons. 3-legged dog is a nonprofit media and theater company founded in 1993 by co-artistic directors Kevin Cunningham and Mike Taylor, and focused on the idea of versatility across disciplines. The unifying force is a shared passion for language in all of its forms. Projects include video installations, experimental theater works, multimedia theater, radio plays, films, videos, hypermedia objects and web sites. During the next two seasons, 3-legged dog will present a new Cunningham multimedia work titled Kampuchea/Loisaida, the second part of Jill Szhumachers Trilogy titled Yield Burning and Mike Taylors If I Were You, a multimedia performance work.

CEZARIJA ABARTIS, a fiction writer from St. Cloud, received funding to spend eight days in Eugene, Oregon, at the Flight of the Mind Writing Workshop. Abartis will primarily study with Ursula K. LeGuin.