Past
Grantees

THE PLAYWRIGHTS’ CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, as fiscal sponsor for the WORKHAUS PLAYWRIGHTS COLLECTIVE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $15,000 in support of the production of new works by emerging playwrights.  The Playwrights’ Center champions playwrights and plays to build upon a living theater that demands new and innovative works.  The Workhaus Playwrights Collective is a group of Minneapolis-based playwrights who have curated and produced each other’s work as company-in-residence at The Playwrights’ Center since 2006.  Each three-play season is chosen by mutual consent of the nine-member collective of playwrights.  Workhaus supports the playwright’s ability to know which play is ready to produce and when.  Writers create and present plays as they envision them by taking all major aesthetic decisions into their own hands.  This entails both greater responsibility and greater artistic risk.  The goal of Workhaus is to create a culture of new work.

A grant was awarded to SAM ZALUTSKYfor How to Make it to the Promised Land, a narrative short about Lizzie Lenthem, a Southern California teenager who struggles with the everyday perils of contemporary adolescence: divorced and bickering parents, sexual exploration, fitting in. But Lizzie, who gets sent to a Jewish camp by her mother, must grapple with larger issues when she is forced to play a Holocaust role-play game at camp. Under the guise of an educational experience, Lizzie and the other campers are divided into SS Officers and Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1941. Lizzie plays Anya Ossevsheva, a 21-year-old mother of four who has to find her husband and escape to America (which in reality is the other side of the summer camp) without getting caught by the SS and being sent to a concentration camp. As the game devolves into chaos, Lizzie tries to avoid the ever-increasing frenzy of the campers and the zealousness of her counselors, ultimately realizing that she can no longer participate in this strange game of memory and identification.

ZENON DANCE COMPANY AND SCHOOL, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $28,000 in support of the commissioning and performance of new dance works by three emerging choreographers. Zenons mission is to sustain an artistically excellent, professional dance company, in the Twin Cities, by presenting the commissioned works of emerging and locally, nationally, and internationally recognized modern and jazz choreographers to the broadest and most diverse audiences and communities possible, including those with disabilities. Zenon accomplishes this through performance, education, and outreach. A principal element of Zenons mission is to commission emerging choreographers to create new work, developing those pieces with company members. The works are then fully produced by Zenon.

The Jerome Foundation awarded $15,000 to ACCINOSCO, Brooklyn, New York, in support of the development and production of a new work. Accinosco is a collective of performing artists, designers, and musicians dedicated to creating groundbreaking original works that meld music, texts, technical and theatrical design, and video with unbelievable fact and outrageous fiction. Writer-composer-performer Cynthia Hopkins and her collaborators will research and produce a work devoted to the climate crisis, This Clement World, to premiere during the 2013-14 season. It seeks to illuminate the way in which humanity is currently poisoning its own well, rendering its habitat inhospitable to itself, and the requisite changes of behavior necessary to maintain a habitable climate for generations of people hundreds of years into the future. This Clement World will be a musical-video museum installation, a series of partially improvised performances portraying a variety of guides for the museum display, and an evening-length performance work in three acts.

BROOKLYN ARTS EXCHANGE, New York City, as fiscal sponsor for choreographer LUCIANA ACHUGAR, received $10,000 in support of the development and production of the new work Feeling Form. BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange is a multi-faceted performing arts center dedicated to the development of emerging artists and providing a home for groundbreaking dance and theater. Its programs are constructed to provide opportunities for the creation and production of new artistic works by emerging artists. Choreographer luciana achugar is an emerging Uruguayan choreographer based in Brooklyn. Feeling Form, an evening-length dance duet, will look at dance as a celebration of experience by indulging in the pleasure of being in the body. It will be sensual, fluid, sinuous, and at times sexual because it will be about embracing pleasure. The two dancers will split the stage and very rigorously mirror one another, creating a kaleidoscopic dance. In Feeling Form, achugar aims to erase the difference between seeing the dance and feeling the dance.

The AMERICAN COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA, New York City, received $26,000 in support of commissions for emerging composers. The American Composers Orchestra (ACO) is dedicated to the creation, performance, preservation, and promulgation of music by American composers. Its activities include concerts, commissions, recordings, radio broadcasts, educational programs, and new music reading sessions. ACO has performed music by over 600 composers, including more than 200 world premieres and newly commissioned works. With Jerome support, the Orchestra will commission three emerging composers to create new works. ACO will perform the world premieres of those works. The composers will participate extensively in the rehearsal process and in related activities such as meet-the-artist events and interviews.

PANGEA WORLD THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal sponsor for ANICCHA ARTS, received $9,000 to support the creation and production of the new work In Habit [living in a pattern] by Pramila Vasudevan. Pangea World Theater promotes conversations about race, gender, ethnicity, human rights, politics, and social justice through performances and educational programs. It is committed to international works, styles and traditions that illuminate the human condition, end divisiveness, and celebrate differences. Aniccha Arts operates under the direction of Pramila Vasudevan, a contemporary Indian dancer and a professionally-trained visual media designer who investigates the synthesis of dance and media to create immersive performance environments. In Habit [living in a pattern] uses sight, sound, and movement to explore how acquired physical behavior becomes part of a societys structure, and becomes socialized into individuals of that culture, when the original purpose of that behavior can no longer be recalled.

ART INTERNATIONAL RADIO AT THE CLOCKTOWER, New York City, received $25,000 in support of an emerging artists residency program, a multidisciplinary residency launched in early 2011. The program provides artists and artist collectives working in a range of disciplines with the time, resources, and space necessary to create original works of art in a supportive environment that offers opportunities for collaborations, exhibitions, performances, installations, workshops, broadcasts, and archiving. The Clocktower creates environments in which resident artists are able to work with confidence and independence, in a facility equipped to support work in a variety of media.

AIR/ART INTERNATIONAL RADIO, New York City, received $25,000 in support of commissions and residencies for emerging artists in the Clocktower Studio & Residency Program. AIR is an online cultural radio station, arts center, and gallery, operating out of the historic Clocktower Gallery. AIR produces and collects new audio content and compiles a 24-hour stream of material each week. At the heart of the radio station is an archive with thousands of hours of cultural content available free and on-demand. In order to provide artists with the workspace and financial assistance necessary to sustain their artistic endeavors, AIR launched the Clocktower Studio & Residency Program. The program will offer one- to three-month studio residencies to six emerging New York City-based artists each year. No constraints will be imposed on the media in which each artist works. Audio work or work with significant sonic elements will be broadcast as will interviews with each of the artists. Visual and performance work will be exhibited in the Clocktowers many public spaces and studios. The program is the result of AIRs commitment to promote and facilitate the production of new work by members of New Yorks artistic community.

THE LOFT, Minneapolis, Minnesota, as fiscal sponsor for the ASIAN PACIFIC ISLANDER AMERICAN SPOKEN WORD & POETRY SUMMIT, received $7,000 in support of the 2011 Summit. The Lofts mission is to support the artistic development of writers, foster a writing community, and build an audience for literature. It serves more than 600,000 individuals each year with classes and workshops for writers at all levels of development, readings and interdisciplinary events, special events featuring national and local writers, specialized programs for communities historically under-represented or under-recognized in American literature, age-specific programming for teens and children, fellowships, and mentorships. The Asian Pacific Islander American Spoken Word & Poetry Summit is a national gathering organized by and for spoken word artists, poets, writers, musicians, thespians, art activists, organizers, and artists who convene based on the commonality of their Asian-American, Asian, and/or Pacific Islander identities. The 2011 Summit will take place August 4-7 in the Twin Cities. As a grassroots effort, the Summit provides a space for artists and activists to learn from each other and build community; recognize spoken word performance and poetry as sources of new language, new ideas, new dialogues and understanding; and acknowledge the arts as a critical, elemental component in building, empowering, and transforming communities and individuals

EMILY ATCHISON, interdisciplinary artist, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to Shangyuan Village, Beijing City, and Dunhuang, Gansu Province, China, to attend a two-month artist residency at the Shangyuan Art Center, where she will reflect on her art practice, take risks in her work that she would not otherwise explore, and engage with the other residents in cross-cultural and cross-discipline dialogue and group critique.

E. G. BAILEY, spoken word artist, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to Newark, New Jersey and New York City, to engage in a research and development period under the artistic mentorship of Amiri Baraka. He plans to work on a spoken word adaptation of Barakas Wise, Why's, Y's: The Griot's Song Djeli Ya, weaving together a tapestry of spoken word, music, dance, and film to bring to life this epic work on the history of Africans in America.

IVY BALDWIN DANCE, Brooklyn, New York, received $3,000 toward the creation and production of Ambient Cowboy. Formed in 1999 by Ivy Baldwin, the company is dedicated to the creation and performance of new contemporary dance. Ambient Cowboy continues Baldwins interest in deconstructing and combining disparate elements and influences to create mysterious, surreal worlds, full of emotional and physical extremes. Ambient Cowboy explores contrasting elements through dance, drama, sound, and setting. Baldwin is using ideas of transparency and reflection to inform and influence choreographic structure, emotional content, and movement vocabulary.

JESSE BERCOWETZ, sculptor and installation artist, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, and Cambodia, to study Spirit Houses, sculptural shrines used in the practice of animism. He expects this firsthand experience and meeting the people who create, utilize, and care for them will expand his sculpture practice, which incorporates shamanism, altars, shifts in scale, and community architecture. His large-scale work mixes fantasy and reality, commenting on the subconscious of contemporary America.

ANGAD BHALLA received $10,000 for The House That Herman Built, a documentary that follows the creative journey of Herman Wallace, one of the Angola 3 (three men who have been held in solitary confinement for 38 years at the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary known as Angola for a murder they say they did not commit and for speaking out against inhumane prison conditions and racial segregation). Wallace and New Orleans based artist Jackie Sumell developed a friendship and six-year creative collaboration that resulted in The House That Herman Built, a constellation of creative works that were born out of the question: What kind of a house does a man who has lived in a six-foot-by-nine-foot cell for over 30 years dream of? This documentary focuses on the evolving relationship of Wallace and Sumell, starting with Sumell initially writing to Wallace in 2001. The power of that single letter culminated in a travelling exhibition, a book and, ultimately, designs for a 2-story, 3,000 square foot green home that emerged from the imagination of a man who, according to filmmaker Angad Bhalla, has been locked in the darkest dungeon of Americas criminal justice system.

CHANTAL BILODEAU, playwright, New York City, will travel to The Svalbard Archipelago, located midway between Norway and the North Pole, to conduct research for a new play about the impact of Arctic sea ice on the human imagination throughout history. She will incorporate this research into a six-play cycle addressing how Arctic regions are confronting climate change.

LYNNEE DENISE BONNER, composer and sound designer, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to Johannesburg and Cape Town, South Africa, to gain a political and cultural understanding of the social landscape that generated the music and dance genre, Kwaito. Kwaito, house music combined with African sounds and shouted or chanted lyrics, emerged in South Africa during the late 1990s. Bonners interest in researching this form is part of her ongoing composition work around the African Diaspora.

BOWERY ARTS + SCIENCE, New York City, received $20,000 in support of a new program titled Stakeholders Choice. The mission of Bowery Arts + Science is to support and sustain the vital spirit of the spoken word in all its forms, beginning with poetry and including performance, theater, and intersections with music, dance and the visual arts; to support and sustain these arts globally, in all languages, with committed attention to Endangered Languages; to provide a safe haven throug the use of its space, the Bowery Poetry Club; to promote the publishing of books of poetry and poetry in all media; and to encourage community and fruitful interaction among artists. Stakeholders Choice will deepen the organizations commitment to emerging artists. It will utilize an artist/curator Stakeholder panel to discover, vet, and present emerging talent. Eight emerging artists will enjoy opportunities to hone their craft, advance their careers, and perform at the Bowery Poetry Club. Performances will be webcast. At the end of the season, one of the eight artists will receive individual, professional mentoring to develop a feature-length, one-person show, which will be performed at the Bowery Poetry Club and elsewhere.

THE BRONX MUSEUM OF THE ARTS, Bronx, New York, received $18,000 in support of the Artist in the Marketplace Program (AIM) and an accompanying Biennial exhibition and catalog. The Museum presents new ideas and voices in a larger, global context and makes contemporary art both a relevant and indespensible experience for culturally diverse Bronx K-12 students, families, community residents, artists, art patrons, and museum visitors. It presents exhibitions that feature works by diverse and under-represented artists on themes that explore the intersections between popular culture and contemporary art. AIM provides opportunities for emerging artists who have yet to establish strong career roots. Now entering its 31st year, AIM has helped 1,080 artists engage with leading art professionals through seminar sessions and studio visits. AIM artists are selected via an open call and expert panel review. The artists are diverse in age, experience, education, and nationality. AIM invests in the careers of 36 artists each year, and maintains ties with alumni as they move forward in their professions. Each group of 18 artists attends 12 weekly seminars. A culminating Biennial exhibition features works by AIM artists

The BRONX MUSEUM OF THE ARTS, Bronx, New York, received a grant of $18,000 in support of the participation of emerging New York City-based artists in the 2011-12 Artist in the Marketplace Program. Founded in 1971, the Bronx Museums exhibitions explore the intersection between popular culture and contemporary art, support the work of culturally diverse artists, and promote cross-cultural dialogue. Now entering its 32nd year, the Artist in the Marketplace (AIM) program has aided the careers of 1,116 emerging artists. Competitively selected artists participate in a seminar series that secures leading professionals to provide professional development training. The artists learn important and practical artistic skills from invited guest speakers and each other. The program is divided into two groups of 18 artists each who take part in winter and spring seminars. In 2013, the Museum will mount the AIM Biennial exhibition.