Past
Grantees

Playwright and actor JIM STOWELL received support to gather material for a new play. Stowell will spend three months living and traveling in Cuba in early 1997.

Writer JOYCE SUTPHEN received support to go into retreat in Sauk Centre, Minnesota, to finish a new manuscript of poems. She will be able to work for one solid week, without interruption, to complete her work on the manuscript, in a location near, in spirit and geography, to the farm in Stearns County where she spent her childhood.

JOAN SWEEN, Executive Director of the Midwest Theatre Network, will spend five days at the Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Kentucky. She intends to deepen her experience as a dramaturg, and to improve her organization's administration of a biannual new play festival.

SYMPHONY SPACE, New York City, received $8,000 to support the participation of emerging literary artists in the 1996-97 Selected Shorts: A Celebration of the Short Story series. The objective of this series is to foster the appreciation of short fiction and the spoken word. There are ten evenings of Selected Shorts during the season, with occasional special events. Actors read short stories to live audiences. The series is broadcast on more than 120 National Public Radio member stations throughout the country, with an estimated audience of 250,000 listeners each week. This constitutes such an exceptional opportunity for emerging authors to be heard that the Jerome Foundation decided to offer subsidy.

Minneapolis College of Art & Design Gallery Director BRIAN SZOTT will continue and expand his research into the dynamic environment of contemporary art in Mexico by visiting Mexico City, Monterrey and Oaxaca. This return trip will build on a ten-day journey to Mexico City in March of 1996

Filmmaker MARK TANG will visit Hong Kong to witness the 1997 changeover in sovereignty, to study its impact on the local film community and its broader ramifications on Asian-American communities and Hollywood film culture, and to have an opportunity for artistic cultural and intellectual renewal. This will be Tang's return to his birthplace and former homeland after a continuous stay of more than 12 years in the United States.

Writer MARCELLA TAYLOR received support to travel to the Bahamas, her birthplace, to re-create links with that culture and the writers and artists there. She will write, in journal form and poetry, do readings and present a performance piece. She will also conduct research for future writing and performance projects.

Teatro Latino was awarded its first grant from the Jerome Foundation for $13,000 in support of playwrights and play development over the coming season. This multicultural, community-based theater was established to nurture social and cultural awareness within the Latino community and the general population. It primarily produces literary works by Latino/a authors. Jerome subsidy will assist Teatro in working with a range of playwrights over the coming year.

The Jerome Foundation Board authorized its second grant of $9,000 to the TEXTILE CENTER OF MINNESOTA, St. Paul, Minnesota, in support of programming and artists services in the 1996-97 year. This Center was created through the work and vision of fiber artists who needed a place to pursue shared information, education and economic opportunities in the Upper Midwest. Founded in late 1992, the Center has a membership of more than 155 individuals and 17 organizations. The Center mounts an annual Members Show and benefit, sponsors a series of lectures and workshops by textile artists, publishes a quarterly newsletter and a coordinated calendar, maintains a registry of slides of textile works by Minnesota artists and offers a textile telephone hotline which provides current information about events throughout the region. Programs to be implemented in future years include fellowships, textile fairs and juried art shows.

Rafael Viera, Minnetonka, MN, $6,000. For the production of "The Stall", a short narrative film about the struggle to survive mentally and physically the anguish, pain and brutalities of incarceration, to be set in a single prison bathroom stall.

The Plymouth Music Series, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $21,000 in support of the Orchestra Reading Project, which provides valuable orchestral reading sessions under the direction of Plymouth Music Series conductor Philip Brunelle. Each reading session serves four emerging composers.

VOICE & VISION, New York City, received a grant of $8,000 to support the production of a new work, FireDance, by Chiori Miyagawa. The mission of Voice & Vision, founded by Marya Mazor and Jean Wagner, is to build an artistic home for the many women who feel under-served and under-represented by the art and imagery of mainstream culture. As an investment in an emerging organization, as well as an emerging creator, the Jerome Foundation authorized subsidy.

The WALKER ART CENTER, Minneapolis, received $14,600 to support artists commissions and production fees for programs emanating from the Performing Arts Department. Funding was authorized for Spine, Shawn McConneloug, Lily Tsong, Heidi Arneson and Laurie Van Wieren. The presentation of their work will center on two multidisciplinary program series at the Walker, the first on Beat Culture: 1950-1965 and the second a retrospective program of German artist Hannah Hch.

The WALKER ART CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year $28,000 grant for three Viewpoints exhibitions in which an emerging artist based in New York City and one based in the Twin Cities will be invited to exhibit together, and to consider the possibility of collaborating on a joint installation resulting from the response to each others work. The Viewpoints series will support substantially the work of these artists and act as a catalyst for new and experimental pieces.

Choreographer DIANE WALLER received support to work with John Boesche, one of the leading projection designers in the country. Waller will travel to Chicago at two different times to sit in or planning and design meetings, to acquaint herself with Boesche's studio and his way of working. She will then travel to Calgary to observe the installation of a large project he is undertaking there.

A two-year grant of $52,000 was awarded to The Dale Warland Singers, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in support of the New Choral Music Program. The Dale Warland Singers is a nationally recognized professional choral ensemble which has a firm commitment to performance of 20th Century choral music. Now in its eighth year, the New Choral Music Program allows talented and under-recognized composers to take risks in the creation of new choral work and to receive significant opportunities for professional advancement. A national competition results in four awards to composers to write short pieces for a professional reading by the Singers. From that group of four, The Dale Warland Singers selects one for a major commission. Her or his work is then performed by the Singers as part of its annual concert season.

RUTH WAUKASO, an Anishinaabe visual artist, will spend time traveling to Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Winnipeg in order to revive, in her own work, significant Anishinaabe art objects and designs by studying major collections in four Canadian museums.

LAURIE WEN received support for Don't Worry, I'm Fine, a 60-minute documentary about her role as a link between two of her closest blood relatives-one living, one dead-about whom she knows almost nothing. Themes of alienation and secrecy, both cultural and personal, are explored through the search for who these women are. Wen will move from the personal to a wider scale, in which exile, secrecy and silence reflect the mentality of many whose cultural heritage is haunted by the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Massacre. Cinema vrit footage of her grandmother's life in Hong Kong today will be juxtaposed with footage of Wen's search for her Aunt Maisy's past.

John Whitehead, St. Paul, MN, $6,000. To produce "Down in the Valley", a 50-minute per-sonal video documentary about the evolution of a small middle-American city, using as a center-piece the recent gang-related murder/suicide of four teenagers in his home-town of Appleton, WI.

A grant was awarded to writer MONICA WOELFEL to spend time in the San Francisco Bay Area and in London, England, to conduct research for a memoir, Growing Up in Black & White, the story of two inter- racial sisters. Woelfel will conduct interviews with her sister and research the historical period and place in which they grew to adulthood. The book represents an important continuation of Woelfels work recording the stories women tell