Past
Grantees

VSA MINNESOTA, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $38,000 in support of Project Grants for Artists with Disabilities and developmental programs and services provided to professional artists with disabilities.  The mission of VSA Minnesota is to create a community where people with disabilities can learn through, participate in, and access the arts.  The purpose of the Project Grants is to encourage the creation of new artistic work by emerging Minnesota artists with disabilities.  Grants may fund the creation and production of new work, travel to research and present new work, professional documentation of new work, purchase of supplies or equipment to create new work, professional development, and rental of space to create and present new work.  An open call and panel review process determine the annual selection of Project Grant recipients.

A grant was awarded to STEPHANIE WANG-BREAL for TOUGH LOVE, a feature-length documentary about the conflicting values, uncertainties and tensions that surround the child welfare system. The film follows 23-year old Hasna Hanna, a first-generation Bangladeshi immigrant who, along with her devoted husband Philly, navigates the child welfare system of New York City to get their children back and out of foster care. By following Hanna and Philly, the film will provide a birds eye view of how the system works from the inside. Viewers will experience, firsthand, the hardships and value judgments Hanna and Philly face, as individuals and as a couple, as they attempt to keep their family together.

MAYA WASHINGTON was awarded a grant in support of Through the Banks of the Red Cedar. A play on the Michigan State University fight song, this work follows the filmmakers father, wide-receiver Gene Washington (College Football Hall of Famer and 50 Greatest Vikings honoree) and notable teammates from the 1965 and 1966 Michigan State National Championship teams, as they change the literal face of college and professional football, impacting the lives of their children and generations to follow. The film unfolds through the eyes of the filmmaker, Maya Washington, as she uncovers the individual journeys of these legends their coaches, spouses, friends, children, and grandchildrenrevealing the ways in which football scholarships impacted the lives of players of color, who were literally dropped into an integrated environment for the first time. This film also looks at the lives of generations that followed at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in America. Ultimately, Through the Banks of the Red Cedar is Maya Washingtons story in that it looks at how winning a Big Ten football scholarship in 1963 changed her fathers life, the face of the game, and her own future.

A grant was awarded to CALEB WOOD in support of his experimental hand drawn animated film, MN: Animated Portrait of Minnesota, which focuses on Minnesotas diverse and unique landscapes, wild life, and humanity. The film will stagger back and forth from nature and wildlife to civilization and human behavior. The juxtaposition of these elements will present the year long observed relationship that Minnesotans have with their seasonal environment, ranging from oblivious to harmonious. It will also highlight the beauty of the state's designated and untouched wildlife. A balance between nature and humanity will be the underlying motif. The overall message of MN: Animated Portrait of Minnesota is to present a series of truths that the state of Minnesota holds. The film will be a didactic look at the environment, as well as a work aiming to push the boundaries of how hand drawn animation can be made and used to share experiences in life. This is not a narrative story with a clear conclusion, it is a collection of moments, found through personal exploration in art and environment, composed in a poetic manner.

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.