Past
Grantees

JEFFREY SKEMP, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to Addis Ababa, Bahir Dar, Gondar, and Aksum, Ethiopia to revisit the country with fresh eyes, following a shorter trip in 2007. He will meet with a distinguished scholar at Addis Ababa University, and investigate how the official language Amharics internal rhythm helps to create poetry. As a spoken word artist as well as a writer, Skemp will visit with scholars and artists who write and perform in Amharic. Hell take a guide with him to see other areas of Ethiopia, visiting sacred historical sites. He intends that this trip will inform his poetry and spoken word pieces. His aim when writing is to connect the reader and the audience to his own experiences, invoking a mood rather than a detailed chronicle of an experience.

SMACK MELLON, Brooklyn, New York, received a grant of $10,000 to support the participation of emerging artists in the 2010-11 Artist Studio Program. The mission of Smack Mellon is to nurture and support emerging and under-recognized women and mid-career artists by providing access to the technology, studio space, and exhibition space necessary for the realization of ambitious projects. It is a vehicle whereby under-represented artists may create, explore, and exhibit their creative ideas outside the concerns of the commercial art world, offering many artists the exposure and recognition they deserve. The Smack Mellon facility encompasses six artist studios, a media studio, a workshop for wood and metal fabrication, a kitchen, and a shared lounge area for the Artist Studio Program. Selected through an open call, artists receive extended residencies to create new work.

THE SOAP FACTORY, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $24,000 to support the participation of Minnesota and New York City-based emerging artists 2010 visual arts exhibitions. The Soap Factory is dedicated to the production, presentation, and promotion of emerging contemporary practice across the visual arts. Committed to experimentation and risk-taking, The Soap Factory offers audiences a real and immediate experience of the arts, and encourages a wider understanding of and an appreciation for artists and their work. The Soap Factory presents large-scale group exhibitions, large-scale installations, and single projects in a season that runs from February through November. The shows are selected by staff and invited curators, who bring new artists and select from annual artists submissions to The Soap Factory. By maintaining an open structure and involving guest curators and volunteers, The Soap Factory ensures that no single aesthetic dominates its vision.

SOCRATES SCULPTURE PARK, New York City, received a two-year grant of $46,000 to support the participation of emerging New York City artists in the 2010 and 2011 Emerging Artist Fellowship Program. Socrates is dedicated to providing artists with opportunities to create and exhibit large-scale work in an environment that encourages strong interaction among artists, art works, and the public. The Parks existence is based on the belief that reclamation, revitalization, and creative expression are essential to the survival, humanity, and improvement of our human environment. Through a competitive application and review process, emerging artist fellowship recipients receive financial support; a residency in the outdoor studio; and access to facilities, materials, equipment, and technical assistance to create works for the annual Emerging Artist Fellowship Exhibition.

SOHO REP, New York City, received a two-year grant of $30,000 in support of playwrights fees across the spectrum of its new play commissioning, development, and production activities. Soho Rep is committed to nurturing innovative and uncompromising new work from first impulse to fully mounted production. Jerome support is designated for the participation of New York City-based emerging playwrights. Soho Reps comprehensive and robust new play development programs, the Writer/Director Lab and the Soho Rep Studio, provide a welcome home for early career writers and directors to generate new plays from scratch. The Lab culminates in a free public reading series each spring. The Soho Rep Studio program provides a flexible environment in which all types of projects in development may become stronger and palpably closer to production-strength.

GLENDA SOL KOERAUS, New York, New York, will travel to Seville, Spain, to study Sole, known as the mother of all flamenco dance, at the Centro de Arte y Flamenco. She will work with the internationally recognized Bailaora Carmen Ledesma. Sol Koeraus (stage name Sol, La Argentinita), in interested in Ledesmas integration of multi-ethnic perspective, range of emotion, and comparison of traditional and modern forms into a uniquely defined style. This study will provide new techniques and help her refine her own work.

STREB, Brooklyn, New York, received a grant of $21,000 in support of the participation of emerging New York City and/or Minnesota-based movement artists in the Emerging Artists Commissioning Program. STREB tours throughout the United States and internationally presenting performances and residencies. It conducts year-round activity at its home studio/laboratory, the STREB Lab for Action Mechanics (S.L.A.M.), a creative and educational center where new productions are mounted, classes for children and adults are taught in the POP ACTION school, and all company activities are open to the public. Elizabeth Strebs vision for S.L.A.M. is as a beta-test for a new cultural paradigm, an open access venue that models a new kind of artist-driven community institution. The STREB Emerging Artists Commissioning Program accepts proposals via an open call from artists whose work is movement-based, including choreographers, aerialists, and circus artists. The goal of the program is to commission and support new work by a pool of artists who can capitalize on the resources distinct to S.L.A.M. Commissioned artists receive opportunities to showcase their work throughout its development and receive critical feedback. Artists also receive time in the space, and resources tailored to the nature and scope of their projects.

MICHAEL SUTZ, St. Paul, Minnesota, will travel to Warsaw, Krakow, and Bialystok, Poland, and Prague, Budapest, to travel with his father to Holocaust sites in Eastern Europe as a witness to memory and conveyor of memory to future generations. Sutz will participate in an organized tour of the Warsaw Ghetto, sites of Jewish communities in Budapest and Prague, and the death camps. He will end the trip with a visit to Bialystok, his grandfathers birthplace, and home to a once thriving Jewish community, now completely erased. This experience will serve as inspiration for a documentary work on the role of third generation survivors and the effect that their parents and grandparents narratives had on their lives.

TEACHERS & WRITERS COLLABORATIVE, New York City, received $16,000 in support of its 2010-11 Fellowship Program. The Collaborative seeks to educate the imagination by offering innovative creative writing programs for students and teachers, and by providing publications and resources to support learning through the literary arts. Its activities include writing workshops in which professional writers are sent into schools and community sites; publications; a resource library and meeting place for imaginative writing; an event series featuring readings, panel discussions and book launch panels; online conversations about the teaching of writing; and a fellowship program. Fellowships offer support to talented early-career writers. The fellows receive a stipend; time to write; office space and resources; opportunities to meet with experienced professionals from publishing, literary, and other fields related to the fellows' works; and engagement with management of the Collaborative's work, including writing residencies, publications, and a reading series.

The TEXTILE CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $30,800 in support of Fiber Artists Project Grants and programs and services for emerging professional fiber artists in the Centers 2010-11 program year. The Center is a locally-based national center for fiber art. Its mission is to honor textile traditions and promote excellence and innovation in fiber art. The Fiber Artists Project Grant program was launched in 2008 to advance the professional development of emerging fiber artists in Minnesota and foster vitality and excellence in the field of fiber art. Open to emerging artists living in Minnesota, the program provides artists with stipends, a culminating exhibition, and opportunities for networking and professional development. The program is designed to expand opportunities for emerging fiber artists in Minnesota, supporting artists as they undertake specific and individually designed artistic projects. Three $4,000 grants will be awarded to support a wide range of project activities.

TICKLE THE SLEEPING GIANT, New York City, received $8,000 to support the development and production of choreographer Trajal Harrell's Antigone Sr. / Twenty Looks or Paris is Burning at the Judson Church (L). Tickle the Sleeping Giant was founded by Artistic Director Harrell in 1996. Its primary purpose is to advance interest in and understanding of post-modern and contemporary dance and their application to everyday life. The organization creates original dance works, performances, interdisciplinary collaborations, and publishing initiatives. Since 2001, Harrell's work has been based on a theoretical conversation between the parallel aesthetic histories of the voguing dance tradition and the early post-modern dance tradition. He explores issues of coolness, community, sincerity, and the relationship between voguing's realness and the authenticity of early post-modernism.

The TOFTE LAKE CENTER, Ely, Minnesota, received a grant of $14,610 for a program that will provide individual creative artists and a collaborative team of artists with residency time to focus on current work. sponsors artists residencies designed to support creative work. The Center provides artists with shared experiences, engagement with the environment, access to artistic workspace, and the stimulation of new conversations and community. It will engage artists from Minnesota and New York City. The program is open to emerging creative artists working in theater, literature, music, dance, and the visual arts. An open call will be issued with artists proposals reviewed by selection panels.

TOFTE LAKE CENTER, Ely, Minnesota, received $16,000 in support of residencies for emerging New York City and Minnesota-based artists in the summer 2011 residency season. The Center is a creative retreat located on the shores of a beautifully secluded lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness of Minnesota. From May through September, Tofte Lake Center offers artistic residencies for individuals and groups creating new works. Residencies balance group activities, personal work time, facilitated conversation, and the exchange of work. Residencies are structured around the specific needs of the artists. The emerging artist residencies are open to both individual creative artists and collaborative teams of artists who wish to focus attention on the development of current work. The program will subsidize two periods of week-long residencies for seven emerging artists each week and one residency for a performing arts project led by emerging artists who will have exclusive use of the facilities for an entire week. The aim is to provide space and means of support for individual artists wishing to further their creative endeavors in the visual, literary, and performing arts. An open call for applications with independent panel review constitutes the selection process.

REBECCA L. THOMAS, New York, New York, will travel to Madrid, Spain, for an intensive study of abanico (fan) and manton (manila shawl), two Flamenco techniques she plans to incorporate into her repertoire for future artistic work. She will study with Concha Jareo and La Truco at Amor de Dios: Centro de Arte Flamenco y Danza Espaola. Thomas is driven by the desire to infuse flamenco with a modern edge, but feels it is critical to have a mastery of the traditional elements.

KA VANG, St. Paul, Minnesota, will travel to France and Germany to research the lives and folklore of Hmong communities in order to inform new work and improve as a fiction writer. Vang is a fiction writer, playwright, and creative nonfiction writer. Shes previously researched the lives and folklore of the Hmong in Australia, Laos, and China. She often writes about identity and heritage themes while interweaving magic realism throughout her work. Direct experience of Hmong identities in other countries will help her develop complex and real characters in order to write more authentically about the Hmong diaspora. No level of research removed from place can substitute for actually talking with Hmong people in France and Germany, listening to them, and writing about their issues and voices.

VOCALESSENCE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $27,000 in support of Essentially Choral 2011. The mission of VocalEssence is to champion choral music of all genres, celebrating the vocal experience through innovative concerts, commissions, and community engagement programs. VocalEssence seeks to engage and enrich its audiences, who expect the unexpected. Its focus is on commissioned and first performances of music as well as important, but rarely heard, works of the past. Essentially Choral focuses on the creation, development, and production of new works by emerging artists. In partnership with the American Composers Forum, VocalEssence selects five emerging composers from Minnesota and New York City, who travel to the Twin Cities to fine tune new work, receive constructive feedback on their compositions, engage in reading sessions with the VocalEssence Ensemble Singers, and receive a recording of their compositions during the last reading session. Composers receive an honorarium, travel and lodging subsidy, and an opportunity to receive a commission for a work to be premiered by VocalEssence.

VANESSA VOSKUIL, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to the United Kingdom and Austria to conduct individualized study and research for new work and expand her knowledge of dance for the camera. As research for The Prophet Commissions, new work based on ideas from Kahlil Gibrans The Prophet, Voskuil will spend time at the London-based School of Life. She will also attend the moves11 and Constellation Change Festivals, both dance for the camera festivals in the United Kingdom. These festivals will provide opportunities to expand her skills as a choreographer interested in making movement work for the screen. She will also attend ImpulzTanz, an international dance festival in Vienna to engage with other choreographers around performance aesthetics and practice.

VSA MINNESOTA, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grantof $38,000 for the VSA Minnesota/Jerome Foundation Project Grants for Artists with Disabilities. The organizations mission is to create a community where people with disabilities can learn through, participate in, and access the arts. The program assists emerging artists in moving forward in their artistic careers, resulting in new work and providing new skills or resources so that new work may be created. This program operates on the basis of an open call and independent jury review. It is open to artists working in any arts discipline. The programs goals are to recognize excellence in arts produced by persons with disabilities; provide tangible encouragement and financial awards to artists with disabilities who wish to undertake creative projects to benefit their careers; and identify Minnesota artists with disabilities whose art is a serious pursuit guided by a personal, artistic vision.

KAO CHOUA VUE, St. Paul, Minnesota, will travel to Laos to study the traditions and history of his parents homeland and bridge the gap between Hmong American and Hmong Lao through film. Being a displaced people, without a written language, oral tradition is a critical means for the Hmong people to sustain their language, stories and traditions for future generations. Vues father began using the video camera as a visual extension of oral tradition, without any knowledge of filmmaking. Vues self-proclaimed goal is to use film to preserve the essential elements of Hmong identity. He has the technical skills his father lacks, but lacks the visual, physical experience of having been to Laos. This travel to his cultural homeland will give him an opportunity to understand how Hmong people living in Laos today are using media.

Maia Wechsler received support for a documentary on a dramatic act by Melvin and Jean McNair, marking the beginning of a long journey that transformed them into fugitives from American justice and a cause celebre in France.