Past
Grantees

KIMBERLY WOOD received funding for On My Knees, a narrative film that creates a portrait of Victorian maid-of-all-work Hannah Cullwick, drawing from 17 years of her diaries. Themes of class, race, and gender are explored vis--vis Cullwicks relationship to her employer and her upper class secret paramour.

The NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York City, acting as fiscal agent for artist YASUKO YOKOSHI, received a grant of $10,000 to support the developmental stage of Yokoshis new work Shuffle. Yokoshi creates highly performative dance works that deliver cutting edge theatrical drama by revealing the magic of transformation through multiple characters who have a cartoon-like clarity. Shuffle is a dance/theater/multimedia performance piece that will be constructed in several episodes. Some are based on true personal stories, and will be juxtaposed to an exploration of Kojiki, an ancient Japanese creation mythology. Shuffle will premiere in the spring of 2003 in New York City.

A grant was awarded to SUSAN SHIVA YOONESSI in support of The Classifieds: Vern, a quirky documentary that follows the story of a painter, Vern Koski, who was posthumously immortalized on canvas after a 24-year-old conceptual artist placed a classified ad looking for someone to "donate their ashes to art." Vern's wife (an aspiring actress) Marcia Koski answered the ad and offered the remains of her cremated husband. Never recognized for his art during his life, ironically, Vern Koski became "his on life's work."

Marina Zurkow was awarded a grant in support of Little Miss NO, an animated adult fairy tale about boundaries, bohemians, and spiritual materialism. Utilizing 1960's graphic design references, jazz fragments, and concepts of Buddhist philosophy and psychoanalysis, the project stitches together the family, fantasies and nightmares of a little girl who finds out for herself how to speak up and saynot scream"NO." Little Miss NO is vector animated in Flash, and will be distributed on both the Internet and via TV and festivals.

THE PLAYWRIGHTS CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, acting as fiscal agent for playwright CARLYLE BROWN, was awarded a grant of $10,000 in support of the production of Browns The Masks of Othello. This multimedia performance piece traces the journey of the play Othello, The Moor of Venice, by William Shakespeare, through the centuries. This play about a play highlights the famous actors and moments in the original plays production history and the popular, critical, and social reactions it has prompted over time.

LINDA BRYANT & LAURA POITRAS received funding for Flag Wars, a cinema verite documentary about the conflicting issues in a working class black neighborhood when white gays and lesbians move into the area.

A grant was awarded to PAUL CHAN in support of Happiness (Finally) After 35,000 Years of Civilization, an experimental animated film that reinterprets the drawings of outsider artist Henry Darger and utopian socialist Charles Fourier to explore the Western conception of Utopia.

IL PICCOLO TEATRO DELLOPERA/CREATE!, Brooklyn, New York, submitted a request as fiscal agent for THE DANCERS CO-OP, the company of choreographer Gabri Christa. Jerome Foundation Directors authorized $10,000 to support the development of new work by Christa for The Dancers Co-Op. Her style of movement is a blend of her Caribbean/European heritage, African Diaspora religions and popular culture. An ongoing theme is the exploration of social and cultural displacement and how populations are able to negotiate the differences between community and identity. Funding was authorized for The Winti Project, in which Christa will focus on former and present Dutch colonies and the results of the colonial influence in the Dutch Caribbean and Suriname. She is particularly interested in the Sarammacan culture, which reflects one of the Surinames largest Creole populations.

MAYA CHURI was awarded a grant in support of Forest Grove, a narrative fiction web site that will explore the architecture of storytelling by aligning it with the architecture of manufactured communities. The site will incorporate hyperlink technology, flash, live-action, audio and text to enable the user to explore a more structured environment using an unconventional form.

LISA CRAFTS received funding for The Flooded Playground, a digitally animated fairy tale about a young child living under persistent assault, who gets jolted into a craggy emotional wonderland where he wanders into deep forests and through his inner inferno in a quest to mend his damaged spirit. The visual style is a hybrid technique in which Ms. Crafts scans photographs, drawings, and objects, then digitally manipulates them to create the settings, atmosphere and animation.

DANCE COUNCIL, Minneapolis, Minnesota, was founded in 1997 by choreographer Alyce Finwall as a vehicle for theatrical expression. Finwall works upon the premise that dance is the physical language of the human condition. Shes drawn to the idea that choreography and theater should work together. Finwall received a grant of $12,500 to create a 40-minute piece based on the story of Persephone. Shell work with sound designer John Jindra and puppeteer Michael Sommers. The work encompasses several different ideas and theories ranging from the changing of seasons to the metamorphosis of an adolescent girl into an adult woman.

DANCE COUNCIL, Minneapolis/New York City, received $12,500 in support of the creation and development of new work by choreographer Alyce Finwall. She bases her work on the belief that dance is the physical language of the human condition. Finwall merges dance and theater to create emotional and lyrically intense pieces. Jerome support will enable her to create three new works: two quartets and a trio.

LIZA DAVITCH, Minnetonka, MN, received support for Victory Square, a contemporary, nonfiction story of Tania and Nastia a close knit mother and daughter living in the former Soviet Republic of Belarus. This documentary explores the mutual dependency and parent/child role switching that occurs within their intense, primal relationship. It also looks into the bond between them through the travails of romantic love, despotism, and other upheavals of life.

Funding was awarded to JIM DE SEVE for Tying the Knot, a sixty to ninety-minute documentary that will explore the personal feelings and social contexts of straight and gay marriages as focused through the lens of de Séve himself, who has played videographer for his family and straight friends weddings. He now turns the camera on his own life as he and his boyfriend plan their marriage.

JAMES DOWELL/JOHN KOLOMVAKIS (previous recipients), were awarded funding for Ned Rorem: Word and Music, a feature-length portrait of Ned Rorem, the Pulitzer Prize winning composer and diarist. Through this engaging man, the viewer will be provided with a window into the music and literary world of the last sixty years. His diaries revealed a sexual candor in this form unseen before. His music has a clarity that has made him a role model for many young composers.

REBECCA FEIG, received funding for STOLEN: The Lost Treasures of Isabella Stewart Gardner, an hour-long documentary film about the largest art heist in American history, which took place at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The film also pays homage to Isabella Gardner. By including both the past and the present, the film will illuminate the clash of worlds involved in this story, where a living piece of 19th Century Boston is paid a very unwelcome 20th Century visit.

THALIA DRORI, St. Paul, MN, was awarded a grant in support of Toxic Energy: Little Miss Potentiality Returns, a dark feature-length narrative comedy that follows a heroine who fights to save her community from a corrupt mayor.

JUDD EHRLICH was awarded a grant in support of Mayor of the West Side, a complex coming-of-age documentary about Mark Puddington, a teenager born with multiple disabilities, who is a celebrity in his New York neighborhood.

ELEVATOR REPAIR SERVICE, New York City, received $15,000 in support of its 2001-02 season. Its aesthetic combines found objects and texts with elements of slapstick comedy, dance, audio design and dramatic literature. Elevator Repair Service company members contribute ideas and material, and embrace the unpredictable collisions among various source materials and theatrical styles. The aim is to be mysterious, comical and gracefully awkward. The tenth anniversary season begins in August with work on a new show, followed by continued development of that new piece in the spring toward full production in the fall of 2002 at P.S. 122 in New York. The company will revise and polish a previous work, Highway to Tomorrow, for a run in early January. Subsequently, that work will tour in the US and Europe.

Funding was awarded to ELIZABETH ELSON in support of Born in a Barn, an hour-long documentary that explores the lives of three characters involved in the erotic subculture called Ponyplay and reveals what motivates them to pursue such an unusual pastime.