Past
Grantees

SHAWN ATKINS - Eyeball, an animated short film that traces the story of a girl who commits a brutal act and literally swallows the evidence. The story follows her as this secret becomes more and more internally disturbing to her, giving her nightmares. This causes her conscious mind to separate from her unconscious.

PHYLLIS BALDINO received a grant for Color without Color, an experimental documentary about Achromatopsia, a rare condition that prevents the eyes from seeing color.

MICHAEL BANNING, artist, will attend a seven-day Fresco Workshop in Detroit, Michigan, and will visit noted public murals in Detroit and other cities in the Upper Midwest. The workshop will involve hands-on experience in all the steps of fresco painting including pigment, plaster and lime preparation, plastering and painting

EVA BARR, a resident of Wykoff, received a grant to travel to the Norlands Living History Center in Livermore Falls, Maine, to experience the adult live-in and to use this experience in her work creating interactive, inclusive theatrical experiences.

LANA BERNBERG received a grant for Wake Me When It's Over, an experimental narrative that will be a lyrical and elusive story of Helen, a young woman spurned by her mother after revealing her lesbian longings, who plunges into the dark depths of depression.

NICHOLAS BLAIR received support for Coming of Age at the End of the World, a documentary about a 71-year-old Jewish grandmother who takes her granddaughter back to her homeland of Poland, where she faced incredible trauma during the war.

A grant of $15,000 was awarded to the BRONX COUNCIL ON THE ARTS, New York City, for Longwood's Cyber Studio Fellowship Program. This is a new initiative that provides a unique opportunity for emerging artists to use cyber technology as a creative tool. The project's main purpose is to provide opportunities for artists to work in its new cyber studio to create new work within a supportive and creative environment.

EVA ILONA BRZESKI was given support for Last Seen, a feature-length narrative film about the disappearance of a high school girl, who was last seen running in desperation around a school track in street clothes and bare feet.

>A grant of $10,000 was authorized for The Builders Association, New York City, in support of the development and production of TOSCA. Under the artistic direction of Marianne Weems, The Builders Association produces large-scale performance events exploring the languages of theater, media and architecture. TOSCA is envisioned as embodying a more fluid approach than The Builders Association has used in the past. This piece will be approached through the explosion of youth-oriented techno music and video, and based largely on fragments or samples drawn from that culture.

MARTHA BURGESS was supported for Ignatz' Nose Travels in Still Life, an interactive CD-ROM that will consciously select a concealed aspect of our culture and tease out its meaning, desirability and use via everyday objects. It will contain a series of still life photographs within which animation, sound tracks, video clips, poems, jokes and interactive stories are associated and accessible.

A grant was awarded to singer/songwriter GARY BURT of Grand Rapids to travel to the Swannanoa Gathering in Asheville, North Carolina to study songwriting with renowned contemporary folk artists.

WALLY CARDONA VENTURES, New York City, received $10,000 in support of the Solos Project in 1999. Cardona will create an evening-length program of solos featuring guest artists renowned for their work as exemplars of certain styles and techniques. The soloists/guest artists will perform on stage with the four-person Wally Cardona Quartet. Solos will be created for individual performers with the Royal Ballet, the Martha Graham Dance Company, the Merce Cunningham Company, the New York City Ballet, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and the Jos Limn Company. Solos will also be created for each member of the quartet. Cardona hopes to engage young experimental composers to create electronic music for the work.

Actor and storyteller WILLETHA (TONI) CARTER and writer and storyteller ROSE MCGEE will travel to Ghana, West Africa to attend the Fourth Annual Pan African Historical & Theatre Festival and participate in the First Annual International Black Storytelling Festival. Through firsthand exposure to West African culture, they will gather information to enrich their storytelling presentations.

CAVE CANEM, New York City, received subsidy of $22,000 to support the participation of New York City and Minnesota emerging writers in the summer retreat and workshop at Mount St. Alphonsus and the 1999-2000 New York City poetry workshops. Cave Canem was founded in 1996 as a summer writing workshop designed to enhance the development of emerging and under-recognized African American poets, strategically positioned to be an affordable alternative to larger, more expensive workshops. Cave Canem fosters a community of African American writers and creates an atmosphere in which participants freely take creative risks.

Vocalist and composer LILA KANE received a grant to travel for three months in New Delhi, Haridwar, Beas and Rishikesh, India, and Athens, Greece, to further her study of ancient mystical/sacred music, chanting and sound practices, which will be incorporated into her next opera.

CHEAP THEATRE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $8,000 to support New Play Series 4. Cheap Theatre's mission is to produce new plays, drawing on local and regional talent to bring compelling new theater voices to Midwest audiences. Its name reflects a policy of providing inexpensive tickets for each production in order to make new plays accessible. The New Play Series is the primary vehicle for advancing the mission of the company to provide playwrights with full professional productions. This coming season, the two new plays in the Series are Stroganoff by Erica Christ and Santa Concepcion, by Anne Garcia Romero.

The Jerome Foundation Directors authorized a grant of $20,000 to support the 1999-2000 Mentor Project of CHERRY LANE ALTERNATIVE THEATRE, New York City. Cherry Lane is committed to the development of emerging artists and to presenting them with opportunities to work with experienced and outstanding theater artists. It provides readings, workshops, master classes and productions, in order to create a working community of artists and a home base for the development of new works. The Mentor Project provides opportunities for five emerging playwrights to develop new scripts, working one-on-one with master playwrights. Mentors for the current season include Craig Lucas, Alfred Uhry, A.R. Gurney, Wendy Wasserstein and Michael Weller, with Edward Albee as the overall Mentor for the project. Emerging writers, each receiving a stipend, are selected from a field of nominations made by an advisory committee.

Composer MARY ELLEN CHILDS, applying through the sponsorship of the SOUTHERN THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $12,000 in support of artists' fees and other costs associated with a major entrepreneurial initiative designed to advance her work, forge a productive working relationship with a commercial cymbal company and underwrite a European tour for her company CRASH. Childs moves from the conception of musical scores through staging, working much like a stage director or choreographer for musical pieces that incorporate movement, theater and visual media. CRASH is the ensemble through which Childs develops and produces her visual percussion music.

LAURIE COLLYER received a grant for Nuyorican Dream, a feature-length, video documentary about the attempt of a young Latino man named Robert Torres to leave his comfortable life as a school teacher in California. He returns to the Brooklyn home of his childhood in order to help his troubled family.

The COUNCIL ON FOUNDATIONS, Washington, D.C., received $7,350. The Council on Foundations, an association of foundations and corporations, serves the public good by promoting and enhancing responsible and effective philanthropy.