Past
Grantees

BRENNAN VANCE received $25,000 for The Missing Sun, a feature-length narrative film about two families forced to put their disparate beliefs to the test and to reckon with their clashing cosmologies in the midst of a potential solar catastrophe. Sun explores the crossroads of faith and doubt, love and loneliness, generational differences and apples fallen not-so-far from the tree. The film intimately follows seven characters in their individual searches to not only understand what is happening in their crumbling external worlds but to decipher their shifting internal worlds as well.

SPRINGBOARD FOR THE ARTS, St. Paul, Minnesota, as fiscal sponsor for VANESSA VOSKUIL, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $20,000 in support of the creation, development, and production of The Student.  Springboard’s mission is to cultivate a vibrant arts community by connecting artists with the skills, contacts, information, and services they need to make a living and a life.  Voskuil is a director, performer, designer, community organizer, teaching artist, and creator of dances, interdisciplinary performances, and films.  Her work often explores physical, emotional, and psychological space, creating impressionistic textures of human experience that respond to the cultural environment and humanity’s emotional spectrum.  The Student is a large-scale, community-inclusive performance that explores the topic of learning: how one learns, what one learns and internalizes, and how one chooses to act. 

JESSICA WALKER was awarded a grant for 366, an experimental film that explores the significance of aging in communities throughout New York City by documenting one birthday celebration for each calendar day of the year.  While exploring variety among the different types of people born at various times of the year, this repeated inquiry establishes a lens on shared customs and common values across demographics.  A strong emphasis will be placed on visual connections that capture the essence of each birthday celebration.  Video and sound will be choreographed through editing into an abstracted, non-linear narrative viewing experience that is 366 minutes in length.  The final viewing format for the project will be influenced by Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hour Psycho and Christian Marclay’s The Clock, which allow the audience to enter and leave the viewing experience whenever they wish due to the film’s expanded running time.

DEACON WARNER received $15,000 for the feature-length documentary The Co-op Wars. The Twin Cities has by far the largest number of food cooperatives in the country, including several of the largest, forming the basis for an alternative food economy which helped it gain the distinction of the #1 metro area for local food in the nation. According to the filmmaker, this co-op system has contributed to the high level of health and community cohesion in the Cities and has provided a basis for the economic survival of many sustainable family farms in the region.  Many in the food justice movement in other parts of the country look at the Twin Cities’ strong co-op and local food culture with envy, but its accomplishments did not come without struggle. The Twin Cities were the site of the “Co-op Wars” of the mid-1970s, a struggle over issues of class, race, health, ecology and the nature of social change that descended into threats, violent takeovers, and even a car bombing. These issues remain alive for activists of today as they make efforts to create a food system, and a society, that is just, sustainable, and healthy. Through verite footage, interviews, and animation, this film will link “The Co-op Wars” struggle of the past with issues that continue to be wrestled with in the nationwide contemporary food movement today.

Weber, Claudia, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to Los Angeles, Pacific Palisades, and West Hollywood, California, to visit and study visionary residential buildings as part of her research for a project titled "Living Architecture," which will involve site-specific installations and an artist book.  Her goal is to address the concept of “apartment” not as a predefined dwelling unit that houses people but rather as an experimental structure and laboratory within which people can reflect upon contemporary modes of living.  The idea is to challenge defined spaces such as “living room” and conventional modes of “interior decoration”, and instead to re-activate them though theoretical and practical interventions. The research trip will allow her to compare past visionary living ideas to contemporary ones, and help her in the development of her own approach, which is to create through her art practice an awareness of contemporary living conditions, which currently oscillate between the extremes of house foreclosures and luxury living trends.

Wilson, Letha, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to Honolulu, Oahu; Kilauea, Kauai; Kihei, Maui; and Kona and Hilo, Hawaii to investigate, document, and study the unique and magnificent natural landscapes of these islands, from the forested mountains to the lava fields.  Wilson’s work as an artist involves an ongoing engagement with and observation of the natural world.  She pushes the genre of landscape photographs, using photography as a material through which to pursue more complex issues of human interaction with nature and architecture, and how they collide or co-exist, as well as issues of sublime beauty and how this changes over time through decay, destruction, and disintegration.  She expects to return from the trip with a large amount of material and ideas for new work and projects. 

THE PLAYWRIGHTS’ CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, as fiscal sponsor for the Workhaus Collective, received a grant of $15,000 in support of the production of new works by emerging playwrights. The Center champions playwrights and plays to build upon a living theater that demands new and innovative works. The Workhaus Collective is a group of Minneapolis-based playwrights who curate and produce each other’s work as company-in-residence at The Playwrights’ Center. The mission of the Collective is to create a direct and immediate relationship between playwright and audience by fully producing original plays under the artistic leadership of the playwright. The three-play seasons are chosen by mutual consent of the Collective. Each playwright serves as Artistic Director for the duration of his/her play’s production. The remaining playwrights take on other roles necessary for  production. Jerome’s subsidy will support the productions of Christina Ham’s The Hollow and Jeanine Coulumbe’s Homegrown.

ZEITGEIST, St. Paul, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $33,000 in support of the Zeitgeist Composer Workshop.  A quartet of musicians animated by a spirit of adventure and collaboration, Zeitgeist has presented works of substance with passion and integrity for more than 35 years.  With its instrumentation of two percussion, piano, and woodwinds, it strives to forge new links between musicians and music lovers through live performances, commissions, collaborations, recordings, and dialogues with audiences.  The Zeitgeist Composer Workshop is a five-day workshop designed to give emerging composers the opportunity to develop creative ideas and stretch their artistic boundaries in an environment that celebrates exploration and experimentation.  The Workshop focuses on the generation and development of ideas and exploration of musical possibilities.  Each composer brings sketches of material to develop using Zeitgeist as a laboratory.

JOHN AKRE received support for Demolition Dreaming, a semi-fictional docutoon and meditation on urban renewal and the way Akre feels people have treated their urban history in Minneapolis. It will be an animated film mixed with documentary footage of building demolitions in the city over a ten-year period. The film will focus on a man who saw the buildings of the Minneapolis Gateway district constructed and then demolished. It is about a person who has to cope with a city changing so dramatically around him. It is a story of someone who saw history built and removed and then has to re-create it inside his own head. It is a story about an artist who paints advertising on the sides of buildings, and then, when the buildings are demolished, tries to preserve what is lost by painting the former city on the sides of the remaining buildings, until they too are all smashed down.

KEVIN T. ALLEN received support for Western Ruin, an experimental film that explores tourist performance and historical re-enactment of the American West at two roadside tourist attractions known as 1880 Towns in South Dakota. Interviews will be conducted with the sites founders, historical re-enactors, and tourist performers. These interviews will be combined with footage of historical performance, experimental portraiture of site artifacts and the surrounding Western landscape. The 30-minute film employs methods of archeology and sensory ethnography to excavate traces of the living history of the American West.

The AMERICAN COMPOSERS FORUM, St. Paul, Minnesota, received $100,000 in support of the Jerome Fund for New Music and the Minnesota Emerging Composer Award Program. The Forum enriches lives by nurturing the creative spirit of composers in communities. It provides new opportunities for composers and their music to flourish, and engages communities in the creation, performance, and enjoyment of new music. The Jerome Fund for New Music is open to emerging composers, based in New York City and Minnesota, who seek support for the creation and development of a new compositions and the development and reach of the commissions after their premieres. The Fund for New Music is open to composers, composer/performers, improvisers, and sound artists. Jerome funding also supports the Minnesota Emerging Composer Award. Emerging composers working in world music, jazz, and electronic forms are commissioned to create and produce new works.

The ANDERSON CENTER, Red Wing, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $35,000 in support of emerging artists residency-fellowships. The Center is a regional cultural resource that provides a productive environment for the pursuit of creative projects by artists and writers while also advancing appreciation of the arts by presenting cultural programs and events for regional residents. Residencies enable artists and writers to advance work-in-progress and/or initiate new work. For the month of August, the Anderson Center provides subsidized residencies of two and four weeks in duration to emerging artists based in New York City and/or Minnesota. The Center provides a quiet space, uninterrupted time, and supportive resources to artists as they pursue their work.

APERTURE FOUNDATION, New York City, received a two-year grant of $30,000 in support of the publications of three books by emerging photographers. Aperture is dedicated to advancing photography via its magazine, books, traveling exhibitions, and educational programs. Throughout its history, Aperture has been a champion of emerging artists and provided an important launch pad for their careers. Its catalog of over 500 books constitutes one of the most comprehensive and innovative libraries of photography and art.

"LESLEY ARIMAH, writer, Saint Louis Park, Minnesota, will travel to Nigeria to conduct personal and academic research to aid in the completion of her novel.  She will focus on the underpinnings of Nigerian culture and the persistence of certain practices over the centuries. Arimah’s family left Nigeria when she was a teenager, but she has family members there who will help arrange visits with priests and practitioners, and attend ceremonies and masquerades. This research will expand the knowledge base from which she writes, informing her characters’ cultural rationales."

ART IN GENERAL, New York City, received a two-year grant of $38,000 in support of the participation of emerging New York City-based artists in the New Commissions Program.  The mission of Art in General is to support artists in the production and presentation of new work.  In 2005, the New Commissions Program was launched in response to a need for programs that offered individual artists direct support to develop and exhibit new and challenging projects.  Since that time, Art in General has commissioned projects from more than 35 artists, each of whom receives an artist fee, a production fee, curatorial and organizational support, and a solo exhibition.  New Commissions artists create and exhibit works that represent significant advancements and turning points in their careers.

EPHRAT ""BOUNCE"" ASHERIE, choreographer, New York City, will travel to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to study the influences of the Brazilian dance styles, Frevo and Funk, on break dancing. Bounce integrates multiple dance styles in her work as a B-Girl, from the smooth footwork of house dance to more traditional forms, such as ballet and modern. She is interested in the evolution of break dancing over the last forty years and in studying how these cultural dances of Brazil have influenced the b-boys and b-girls of the country.

THE ASPEN INSTITUTE, Washington, D.C., received $7,500 to enhance dissemination activities for the National Study of Artist-Endowed Foundations, which Jerome Foundation previously supported. This study is the first comprehensive research effort to examine the emerging field of private foundations endowed by artists. The extended dissemination of the studys findings and recommendations address important opportunities spurred by a strong interest among key audiences including artists considering foundation formation; artists family members and associates; professional advisors in legal and financial matters; directors and trustees of established foundations; and broader audiences including art dealers, art museum curators, art history scholars, and policy makers in culture and philanthropy.

THE FIELD, New York City, as fiscal sponsor for choreographer KIMBERLY BARTOSIK, Brooklyn, New York, received a two-year grant of $20,000 in support of the creation and production of the choreographic project You are my heat and glare. This work is a tangle of three duets created as multi-genre cycles using dancers, designers, and voice artists. The specific site of the performance is found in relationship to another persons body, developed without any connection to a specific space or architectural structure for presentation. The urgency of intimate relationships drives the question of how and when we desire to go back to something or someone, and how long we endure one situation before seeking a change. The work will premiere in 2013, and will be seen as durational performances prior to that date.

NICHOLAS BOGGS, writer, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to Paris and Saint Paul-de-Vence, France, to conduct research for a book-in-progress, Loving James Baldwin.  The book is a personal account of his search on the untold story of Baldwin’s collaboration and love affair with French outsider artist Yoran Cazac, before, during, and after the publication of their little-known children’s book for adults, Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood.  By visiting the places where Baldwin and Cazac lived, Boggs’ hopes to collect details and rich experiences to provide more profound substance to his writing.

NICOLE BRENDING was awarded a grant in support of The Dollhouse, a feature-length experimental animated film using puppetry with custom-made dolls to create a psychological portrait of Junie Spoons. Spoons was a child star whose premature rise to international pop fame and her strained relationship with her abusive mother drives her to insanity by the age of 18. Getting her start on a Star-Search-like program at the age of eleven, sweet and cute Junie Spoons dancing and singing prowess gains the attention of a record label producer who signs her as one of the labels girl groups. Pushed by her narcissistic and controlling mother, and primed by the record producer, her first album Spoonful hits the charts and Junie is suddenly skyrocketed into international stardom by the age of 13. But her rise to fame is not paved with gold. When she tries to rebel against the manipulation that has kept her in line with her mothers self-serving agenda, she is met with the backlash of her mothers wrath. Without any where-with-all or sense of self to free herself from her mothers tyranny, Junie becomes a doll in her mothers dollhouse by her eighteenth birthday.