Past
Grantees

INTERMEDIA ARTS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, strives to be a catalyst that builds understanding among people through art. It fosters excellence in the creative process and product by presenting diverse cultural perspectives and providing a context in which those multiple perspectives can be understood and ultimately bring people together. Each year, it serves nearly 700 artists and provides more than $400,000 in direct support to artists. A Jerome Foundation two-year grant of $72,000 was authorized to support the Naked Stages Program, which fosters artistic development among emerging performance artists. The program provides funds to create new works, comprehensive production experience, career building skills such as marketing, a performance practice curriculum, and critical response as a developmental tool. Four artists or groups of artists are identified via an annual open call and panel selection.

INTERNATIONAL FRIENDSHIP THROUGH THE PERFORMING ARTS, Burnsville, Minnesota, received $8,000 in support of the commissioning and performance of three new works by composer-performer Gao Hong. The organization is a nonprofit concert presenter and booking agency for performers of world instruments and singers of indigenous songs. Its primary artist is pipa player and composer Gao Hong. Two of the three works to be commissioned will be for solo pipa, and the third written for the cross-cultural ensemble Speaking in Tongues. The world premieres of the solo pipa works will be at the Hebei International Festival in China. The European premieres will be at a large Chinese music festival held in conjunction with the international conference of the European Foundation for Chinese Music Research meeting in Amsterdam. The work for Speaking in Tongues will be premiered at the Sound of Origin Festival in Paris. Hong has plans to perform the works elsewhere and to record them.

SHALINI KANTAYYA was awarded a grant for A Drop of Life, a narrative short about two women, one Indian and the other African-American, and the convergence of their shared struggle to save the world's drinking water. Kantayya seeks to bring awareness to the human dimensions of global water privatization issues and to tell a compelling story about how a few people can make a difference.

JODI KAPLAN received a grant for In The Blood, an experimental short that uses the theatrical platform of a boxing ring and the intense movement of fighting to create a new type of dance. It is about the individual's fight against time, and the brink between life and death.

GREGORY KING was awarded support for Arc Hive (33), an experimental film based on the process of shooting Super-8 film every day for one year. It is a personal cinematic journey exploring time, coincidence, interpretation, and the poetic-spiritual reckoning of chance and circumstance.

THE KITCHEN, New York City, received $12,000 to support new works commissions for emerging New York City-based artists. This interdisciplinary organization provides innovative artists working in the media, literary and performing arts with exhibition and performance opportunities to create and present new works. Emphasis is placed on emerging artists engaged in interdisciplinary practices that are rigorously experimental.

A grant was awarded to JOANNA KOHLER for Uppercut Boxing Gym, a documentary based on a North East Minneapolis gym that is giving birth to something historic. Eight women are boxing their way onto the timeline of women's sports and stretching the boundaries of feminism and violence. The first all female amateur boxing team is preparing for the August 2005 Golden Gloves International Competition in St. Louis, Missouri. This film will chronicle their lives as they train and compete.

TERESA KONECHNE was awarded a grant in support of fertile ground: rural women, the diaspora and our changing landscapes, an experimental personal narrative nonfiction video about Konechne's internal/external journey home to capture the lives of South Dakota rural women, and those who have left. Konechne seeks to tell the history of the place, the relationship of its women to the prairie, and the increasingly hostile economics that render farm life all but extinct.

A two-year grant commitment of $30,000 was approved for CORNUCOPIA ART CENTER, Lanesboro, Minnesota, for artists' residencies. The Art Center provides opportunities for artists to create, refine, explore, and sell their work. An Artist Residency Program, initiated in 2001, provides live/work space, community contacts, and stipends for artists. Emerging artists of all disciplines may apply, and are reviewed by a selection committee. Improvements in living spaces for the artists were achieved this past year. Many of the resident artists have projects that engage the community and draw information from the community.

THE LOFT, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $100,000 in support of the Minnesota Writers Career Initiative. The Loft fosters a writing community, the artistic development of individual writers, and an audience for literature. In 1994, The Loft created the Minnesota Writers Career Initiative Program to help Minnesota writers leverage opportunities to expand their audience and advance their careers. The program serves writers through a two-step process of logistical and strategic planning with a consultant and/or program staff, resulting in the creation of a workable career plan, and the implementation of that plan. The program is open to poets, prose writers, children's authors and spoken word artists poised to pursue opportunities to advance their work.

THE LOFT, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $50,000 in support of the Mentor Series. The Loft Literary Center offers a wide array of programs and services that support writers and readers of all ages throughout the region. In 1979, with Jerome Foundation support, The Loft launched the Mentor Series as a vehicle for emerging Minnesota writers to work in small group settings with nationally recognized authors, and to be mentored by them in ways ranging from review of their work to providing inspiration and examples for the writing life. Key components of the program include nationally recognized mentors serving competitively selected Minnesota writers in residencies extending for several days; small group and private sessions between mentors and participants; public readings; and master classes, workshops and public forums. Twelve emerging Minnesota-based writers (four in poetry, four in fiction, and four in creative nonfiction) work with six nationally acclaimed writers.

Support was awarded to MARIE LOSIER for The Ontological Cowboy, an experimental portrait of Richard Foreman, the renowned playwright who founded and directs the Ontological-Hysteric Theater at St. Mark's Church. The film features several interviews with Foreman and performances by Tom Ryder Smith, Jay Smith, and Juliana Francis, who star in Foreman's most recent play, King Cowboy Rufus Rules the Universe! The work further develops Losier's style of personal documentary portrait filmmaking.

A two-year grant of $30,000 was awarded to the LOWER EAST SIDE PRINTSHOP, which promotes excellence in printmaking by offering opportunities for a broad and diverse range of participants to create, learn about, and collect prints. It's open 24 hours a day, in a new and well-equipped facility, for artists to work independently or with a master printer. Foundation support is directed to two programs. In the Keyholder Residency Program, competitively selected emerging artists receive studio access, support services, tools and basic art supplies, discounts on classes, free slide documentation of their work, access to a library, inclusion in the permanent collection, a presence on the web site, and exposure opportunities through exhibitions and Open Studio days. The Special Editions Fellowship Program is a six-month residency opportunity for emerging artists to create new work in printmaking. Artists receive 12 full-day working sessions with the Master Printer, free materials, technical support, and stipends.

The LOWER MANHATTAN CULTURAL COUNCIL, New York City, received $20,000 in support of artists' stipends for the 2005-06 Workspace: 120 Broadway program. The Council is a leading arts presenter, advocate and service provider for artists and arts groups throughout Manhattan. It provides a variety of programs, grants and services for artists and arts organizations. Jerome Foundation has supported the Workspace initiative since 1999. The Council welcomes applications from emerging artists in visual arts, film/video and creative writing to occupy individual studio spaces for five months, with communal spaces for dialogue and exhibition. Artists receive 24-hour a day, seven-day a week access to their studio spaces. The Council partners with commercial building owners who have vacant floors within their buildings and are willing to contribute the use of that space. Fifteen artists in each of two residency cycles are served each year. Emerging artists with flexible and active practices who are currently without studios are given preference. Salon evenings, studio walk-throughs, and culminating Open Studios enrich the basic program.

MABOU MINES, New York City, received a two-year grant of $60,000 in support of the participation of emerging artists in the Suite Resident Artist Program. Mabou Mines, with a distinguished production history and an active contemporary practice, is a collective of artists who believe that life is performance and that the study and practice of one is the study and practice of the other. The Suite program was established in 1991 to meet the needs of emerging artists in search of a nurturing place to develop work. Every other year, Mabou Mines issues an open invitation to emerging artists and small companies to apply for participation in the Suite program. Once selected, Suite artists connect with company mentors and develop their projects. In the second year, four Alumni Resident artists return to ready new works for production.

Support was awarded to KAREN COVINGTON for The Price of Memory, a mytho-poetic experimental documentary exploring the movement for slavery reparations in the island of Jamaica. It links the present to the past by exploring how the legacies of slavery still affect present-day Jamaica generations, and why some believe in reparations while others are opposed. The film also examines the filmmaker's search for personal truth growing up in Jamaica.

NATIONAL VIDEO RESOURCES, New York City, as fiscal sponsor for GRANTMAKERS IN FILM AND ELECTRONIC MEDIA (GFEM), received $2,500 in program support. GFEM is an association of grantmakers committed to advancing the field of media arts and public interest media funding. It sponsors grantmaker briefings, collaborates on the Council on Foundations Film and Video Festival, presents media arts programming at the Grantmakers in the Arts conference, support an electronic media policy working group that focuses attention on issues with major impact on the media environment, provides information sharing services to constituents, and undertakes special projects such as publications.

ALBERT MILGROM received a grant for The Dinkytown Uprising, a documentary that juxtaposes student activist protests against the incursion of a fast-food chain on the University of Minnesota campus called The Red Barn with the macrocosmic anti-Vietnam war protests in the Spring of 1970. The film also aspires to see how attitudes of some participants have changed over time.

The AMERICAN COMPOSERS FORUM, St. Paul, Minnesota, acting as fiscal sponsor for composer ANN MILLIKAN, received $8,000 in support of the production of a CD of Millikan's work by the California E.A.R. Unit. The American Composers Forum links communities with composers and performers, encouraging the making, playing and enjoyment of new music. The Forum seeks to provide direct support to composers at every stage of their careers and to develop markets for composers and their music. Composer Ann Millikan will record a CD of her music performed by the California E.A.R. Unit for release on the Innova label of the American Composers Forum. The CD will contain four new works and two composed in 2000 for the E.A.R. Unit, an ensemble comprised of flute, clarinet, piano, percussion, violin, and cello.

The MINNEAPOLIS COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year commitment of $160,000 in support of the MCAD/Jerome Foundation Fellowships for emerging visual artists. This grant supports the continuation of a fellowship program, created in 1981, which annually awards fellowships to five competitively selected emerging visual artists living in the 11-county Twin Cities metropolitan area. The program includes $9,000 fellowships, a culminating exhibition with catalog, access to MCAD resources and services, and individual sessions with nationally recognized critics/curators.