Past
Grantees

Katarzyna Plazinska received $30,000 in support of False Positive. False Positive is the story of David, a successful professional, who undergoes a crisis around his commodified existence. A mysterious disaster helps him confront the vast emptiness around him.

Iva Radivojevic received $30,000 in support of Aleph. Aleph is a magical cinematic journey with ten characters that steer us from one to the other and to ten different locations around the world. Their collected stories serve as pieces of a splintered labyrinth that leads us to an understanding of the unimaginable universe, where all of human experience resides: the Aleph.

The artist will travel to Iceland to conduct an experiential investigation into its varied examples of weather. She will have an artist residency in western Iceland and travel to the eastern fjords to experience its climate diversity.

The artist will study printmaking techniques at the Bentlage Printmaking Association at the Kloster Bentlage in Rheine, Germany to strengthen her printmaking skills and inform new ways to approach her studio process. She will also visit and conduct related research in Hengelo, Netherlands, and at the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam and the Jewish Museum in Berlin.

Rachel Elizabeth Seed received $30,000 in support of A Photographic Memory. In A Photographic Memory, a daughter attempts to piece together a portrait of her mother, an avant-garde journalist and a woman she never knew. Uncovering the vast audio-visual archive Sheila Turner-Seed produced, including lost interviews with iconic photographers Henri Cartier-Bresson and others, the film explores memory, legacy and stories left untold.

Davu Seru, Minnesota, received $20,000 to support the debut recording of works fusing blues, African polyrhythm, and chorale-like arrangements for his new sextet, No Territory Band. Seru will continue development of his work-in-progress Dead King Mother with Zeitgeist Ensemble and compose and present public workshops with Scratch Music group (inspired by Cornelius Cardew’s Scratch Music Orchestra) at Studio Z.

The artist will travel to São Vicente, Cape Verde to conduct in-depth studies into Cape Verdean traditional musical forms and to conduct ethnographic research about the late singer Cesária Évora and the cultural implications of her music.

Springboard for the Arts, Saint Paul, Minnesota, received $68,000 over two years in support of artist development and resource programs in 2017-18 and 2018-19.

Alisi Styles received $24,236 in support of The Kite (working title),  a dramatic foreign language short-film set against the backdrop of 1980’s pre-military coup Fiji. The story is about a Pacific father and daughter navigating life and their new identities as immigrants in a new land.

Laura Marie Thompson and Wazina Zondon will travel to Khartoum, Sudan to study womyn's spiritual and physical resilience in a Muslim context.

The artist will travel by car to visit 24 socialist-era monuments in the former Yugoslavia, throughout Bosnia and Hercegovina, Macedonia, Croatia, Montenegro, Slovenia, and Serbia.

The artist will travel to Chicago, IL to train in the performative aspect of contemporary puppet theater (puppet manipulation) from Asian American master puppeteer Tom Lee.

The artist will travel to the porcelain capital—Jingdezhen, China—to learn about blue-and-white painting and famille rose decoration from traditional craftsmen and contemporary Chinese ceramic artists.

The artist will return to her birth city of Seoul, Korea in order to continue her research into her relationship to Korean culture—a pursuit which has had transformative effects on her studio practice as a textile artist and continues to show strong generative potential for future projects.

Brooklyn Arts Exchange, Brooklyn, New York, received $24,000 over two years as fiscal sponsor in support of Ni'Ja Whitson's development and production of Time Trickle ‘Cross You (The Hunted).

Zeitgeist, Saint Paul, Minnesota, received $33,000 over two years for its Composer Workshop in 2017 and 2018 for emerging Minnesota composers.

New York Live Arts, New York City, as fiscal sponsor for 7 Daughters of Eve / Sibyl Kempson, New York City, received $20,000 over two years in support of the creation and production of The Securely Conferred, Vouchsafed Keepsakes Of Maery S. and Sasquatch Rituals in 2017 and 2018.

John Akre, Minnesota, received $10,000 to support Ben and Dopey, an animated feature film about the friendship of a twenty-something downtown Minneapolis street musician and an animated character created by his mother, an underground filmmaker. It will be told in a variety of animation techniques, including animating some parts of it on the streets of downtown Minneapolis with collaboration from the public.

Hawa Allan, New York City, received $5,000 to conduct interviews in Minnesota, Toronto and London as part of a research project on resettled Somali communities.

Fabian Almazan, New York City, received $20,000 to compose new work for his ensemble Rhizome in a jazz-rooted improvisatory context; travel back to Cuba to collect audio samples and experience traditional, folkloric music from the region of his birth; continue experimenting with ways to run acoustic instruments, such as a grand piano, through audio-processing software; and work with a piano maker to pursue his interest in updating the piano as a modern instrument, adding built-in pick-ups.