Past
Grantees

The collaborative team of MARK WOJAHN and MATTHEW BAKKOM received subsidy to spend 14 days traveling to Mississippi River towns from Minnesota to Louisiana, visiting public libraries to show their new documentary film and lead discussions of the issues which surround it. Wojahn and Bakkom in late 1984 traveled along the Mississippi River to document the feelings and thoughts of its diverse inhabitants. They concentrated on issues of civic conduct, the current state of our communities, our collective past and our possible futures.

Since 1988, the Jerome Foundation has awarded support to the WOMENS ART REGISTRY OF MINNESOTA (WARM), St. Paul, Minnesota, for the Mentor Program. A two-year commitment of $27,000 in continued support of that initiative was authorized. The Mentor Program serves two types of participants: mentorsprofessional artists and members of WARM, usually well established in the State of Minnesota; and protgesserious developing artists no longer in school and in the early stages of career development. The program focuses on the emerging artist not only as an independent, creative individual, but as a member of a community in which the creation of art, the discussion of ideas, critical analysis and ongoing interconnection take place.

A grant of $8,000 was authorized for X-ART FOUNDATION, New York City, in support of the publication Blast5. The X-Art Foundation was founded in 1990 to create, encourage and present new forms of text and art. It fosters the collaboration of emerging artists working in diverse media, and enhances the publics knowledge and appreciation of contemporary art through publications, exhibitions, symposia, discussion forums and various on-line activities. Jerome funding will support emerging artists whose works are featured in Blast.

Judith Yourman, Minneapolis, MN, $5,000. For the production of "Refugee Memories", a video installation work which will explore her family's flight from Warsaw at the outbreak of WW II and their subsequent struggle for assimilation in the US, through the use of interviews, archival footage and home movies.

The ensemble ZEITGEIST was founded to present the best of contemporary music reflecting the spirit of the 20th Century. Its commitment to performing the music of live composers drew the Jerome Foundations attention and a two-year commitment of $23,450 for the commissioning and presentation of three works by emerging composers. Those artists are Mark Applebaum, Barbara Benary and Mixashawn. These commissions will enable Zeitgeist to enliven todays music and enlarge its public.

The ZENON DANCE COMPANY AND SCHOOL, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year commitment of $37,500 in support of emerging choreographers residencies and related operating expenses. The mission of Zenon is to sustain an artistically excellent professional dance company in the Twin Cities as well as provide a school program which provides instruction for avocational and professional dancers through a diverse curriculum. This is one of the few companies which performs both modern and jazz. Jerome Foundation support will allow Zenon to commission new works from six emerging choreographers.

Karen Me Kyung Muckenhirn, Minneapolis, MN, $3,000 (Encouragement). untitled. A 20-minute autobiographical video essay which will explore an adopted Korean womans struggle with the loss of family and culture and its relationship to the search for her sexuality.

Funding of $8,000 was authorized to the Minnesota Dance Alliance, Minneapolis, Minnesota, for the 1995-96 seasonal activities of choreographer Chris Aiken. Aiken works both solo and with collaborators. His season includes a number of concerts, touring, teaching and the development of new work.

The Minnesota Composers Forum, St. Paul, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $121,000 to continue the Foundation's long-standing support of the Composers Commissioning Program in Minnesota, and to initiate a pilot of that program for composers living within New York City. The Forum is one of the largest, and arguably the most active, composer service organizations in the United States. Its mission is to promote and provide for the creation, performance and appreciation of new music. The Composers Commissioning Program recently completed its fifteenth year of grants to emerging composers. The defining characteristic of the program is that composers are empowered to be the active agents of their own opportunities rather than relying on performers or ensembles. The pilot year commitment of $35,000 for New York City composers will allow the Forum to investigate whether the CCP can indeed bridge the two geographic areas and be administered in an efficient and effective manner by one agency.

Jo Andres received support for That's It (TO JE TO), an experimental film based on the 1992 journals and drawings of Bosnian visual artist Izeta Gradevic. Gradevic, along with her husband and friends from the Obala Art Centar, was forced to take shelter in the basement theater of the Drama Academy to survive the siege of her hometown, Sarajevo. The film will focus on the woman's interior landscape-her hopes, fears, dreams-interwoven with daily acts of existence. Dreamlike, spectral and mysterious, Andres' work has a distinctive, nonlinear shape that appeals both to the conscious and the subconscious.

Art in General, New York City, received a two-year grant of $20,000 in support of the participation of emerging artists in the 1995-96 and 1996-97 exhibition programs. Art in General has shown the work of over 1,600 artists. Programs are selected by Advisory Panels, with a heavy emphasis on artists selecting artists. Exhibitions take the form of thematic group shows and in-depth presentations of one, two or three-person exhibitions.

A grant of $25,000 was made to Artists Space, New York City, in support of the participation of emerging American artists in the 1995-96 and 1996-97 exhibition seasons. Serving as a laboratory for research into and development of new art, Artists Space supports emerging and under-recognized artists. It maintains an extensive Artist Slide File. It presents exhibitions for which recognized artists select emerging artists whose works they feel deserve investigation.

Arts Wire, New York City, is a communications project emanating from the New York Foundation for the Arts. It represents the joint effort of artists and arts organization nationwide to communicate more effectively and to put communications technologies to appropriate use. Jerome Foundation authorized a grant of $1,000 to Arts Wire in the form of an institutional membership and general support grant.

Subsidy of $20,000, covering two years of operation, was awarded to the Asian American Writers Workshop, New York City, in support of programs serving emerging writers. The Workshop was founded in 1991 by young Asian American writers who considered their needs to be specific to their generation, and to an environment that was certainly more multicultural than in the past. Beginning with weekly workshops and expanding to include readings, fellowships, publications and more, the Workshop now presents a variety of activities and services that support the development of the Asian American writer and build an audience for Asian American literature.

A second mid-career grant was authorized for multimedia artist Beth B, in support of two major installations taking place in 1995, the touring of those exhibitions, and the creation of a substantial retrospective catalog of B's career. Beth B has twice received support from the Jerome Foundation's New York City Media Arts Program, in the form of individual production grants.

Writer and teacher SANDRA BENTEZ received support to spend three and a half months in Mexico, El Salvador, Puerto Rico, Missouri, New York and Washington to write Inventos, a work in which she will blend imagination and memory, fiction and fact. Inventos recreates the experience of Bentezs bicultural and bilingual life. It is about healing and hope after abandonment, divorce, physical injury and illness. This is an odyssey of search and discovery.

Daniel Pierce Bergin, Minneapolis, MN, $4,000 (Production). Mixed Messages. A half-hour narrative film about a biracial man who, reflecting on family and community, realizes that although his race may be mixed, his mind cant be.

PHILIP BLACKBURN will spend six weeks in Australia researching sound sculpture prior to beginning a major sound installation, a Sonic Playground, in the Twin Cities. Blackburn is a composer, performer, improviser and builder of musical instruments.

The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for composer Paul Boesing, received $6,000 to develop and produce a Gertrude Stein play, set to music by Paul Boesing. The work will be produced in the summer of 1996, co-sponsored by the Walker Art Center, Red Eye Collaboration and the New Music-Theatre Ensemble, as part of a celebration of the 50th Anniversary of Gertrude Steins death.

The Bronx Council on the Arts, New York City, received a two-year grant of $20,000 in support of the Longwood Arts Project and the Studio Scholarship program. In a former public school facility located in the Longwood Historic District of the southeast Bronx, the Council provides free and low-cost studio space and exhibition opportunities. The Longwood Project includes scholarship studios, exhibitions and an annual journal of programs.