Past
Grantees

EYEBEAM ATELIER, New York City, acting as fiscal sponsor for independent artist REID FARRINGTON, received $6,000 in support of the development and production of the new work Gin & It. Eyebeam is an art and technology center that supports the creation and presentation of art works produced with digital technologies and demonstrating new media as a significant genre of cultural production. It also addresses public appreciation of new media, researching and developing new technologies, and artists' access to digital tools. Farrington designs, directs, and produces new works that challenge stage convention and technique. His vision integrates image with live performance. The source material for Gin & It is Alfred Hitchcock's 1948 film Rope, based on the Leopold and Loeb murder, the story of two young men who murder a friend just for a thrill. Farrington will intersect Hitchcock's narrative rhythm with the choreography of the camera and film crew, to comment on Hitchcock's failed experiment.

Jerome Foundation Directors awarded $18,000 to FilmNorth (formerly Independent Filmmaker Project Minnesota), St. Paul, Minnesota, in support of two programs that directly support the creation of new works by emerging artists: the Equipment & Facilities Program and the Professional Development and Training Program. The mission of IFP Minnesota is to advance a vibrant and diverse community of independent film and media artists through networking, education, funding and opportunities for showcasing works. The Equipment & Facilities rental and access program provides low cost access to top quality film and video equipment, editing facilities and a digital computer lab. The Professional Development and Training Program includes many and varied activities for emerging filmmakers to develop their craft and professional skills. Master classes, lectures, roundtables, technology training sessions, seminars and workshops are available to emerging makers.

FORECAST PUBLIC ART, St. Paul, Minnesota, received $32,500 in support of the 2010 Grant Program. The mission of Forecast Public Art is to strengthen and advance the field of public art-locally, nationally, and internationally-by expanding participation, supporting artists, informing audiences, and assisting communities. The Grant Program serves emerging artists who are developing and producing public art. Since 1989, it has supported more than 300 emerging Minnesota artists, through research and development efforts, project implementation, and special initiatives. The Research & Development component provides $2,000 awards for artists to develop concepts and designs, research and negotiate sites, connect with community stakeholders, and create renderings or models. The Public Project component provides $7,000 awards for the creation and installation of temporary and permanent public art works anywhere in Minnesota. The Grant Program incorporates an open application process and an independent panel selection.

THE FOUNDRY THEATRE, New York City, received $24,000 in support of the commissioning, development, and production of new works by emerging artists based in New York City. Created in 1994, The Foundry Theatre's mission is to assemble a community of artists with revolutionary ideas for the theater and the world in which it is situated. It commissions, develops, premieres, and tours new theatrical works, inviting audiences to visit unexplored landscapes of thought. The Foundry also hosts public dialogue that brings artists together with public thinkers from other sectors to formulate new questions for changing times. The Foundry is particularly interested in the process that comes from making works from scratch, following an artist and a work from first idea to final production. Jerome support is directed toward production, commissions, and new works development during the 2009-10 season.

FRANKLIN ART WORKS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $21,000 in support of the participation of emerging artists in its exhibition program. Franklin Art Works is a visual and performing arts center that has presented over 90 one-person exhibitions over the past nine years. Its purpose is to present cutting-edge work by contemporary artists, primarily based in Minnesota and New York City. Franklin Art Works celebrates the art of this time in all its complexity and diversity. Jerome support is directed toward the participation of emerging artists in the exhibition season, encompassing the Main Gallery, the Project Space, and Video Gallery. A majority of the exhibition opportunities are directed to emerging artists from the Foundation's two geographic areas, supplemented with artist talks, lectures, tours, brochures, and educational materials.

CAMERON GAINER, artist, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to San Juan and Vieques, Puerto Rico, to deepen his scientific, artistic and linguistic capabilities, while forging the foundation for a future body of artworks. He intends to research the bioluminescent dinoflaggelate organism and its delicate habitat by working with Ivelisse Johnson and Mark Martin at the Vieques Conservation and Historical Trust. He will also study the history and formal elements of synchronized swimming with the former Olympian Luna del Mar Aquila in San Juan.

Artist ELAINE GAN, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to Manila, Philippines, to research, locate and document various spatial forms, urban zones and gated communities that reflect uneven geographical development and growing disparities in distributions of capital/commonwealth. Gan is an artist working in the public domain to reconfigure urban spaces, social roles and popular images. Her research will focus on spatial forms, urbanization processes and human migrations/displacements that have shifted or developed as a result of specific sociopolitical events beginning with the 1986 People Power Revolution. She seeks to construct a visual constellation of built environments as spatial products linked to contemporary neoliberal and postcolonial occupations.

Playwright KELI GARRETT, St. Paul, Minnesota, will travel to New Orleans, Louisiana, to study and research the life of Homer A. Plessy and the historic Black neighborhood of Faubourg Trem in the city of New Orleans. The research will fuel her new play Zebra(s).

THE GIVENS FOUNDATION FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $16,200 in support of The Givens Black Writers Collaborative Retreat. The mission of The Givens Foundation is to enrich cultural understanding through programs that promote and celebrate African American literature and writers. The Givens Black Writers Collaborative Retreat is a four-day, Minnesota-based retreat for emerging African American writers focused on providing mentoring and peer support for the writing life, the honing of literary craft, and the production of new works. Participants are selected through an open call and independent panel review. Retreat activities include workshops, free writing time, roundtable discussions, and one-on-one time with Retreat mentors. Workshops are a combination of writing exercises, work sample sharing, and feedback discussions. Following the Retreat, participating writers will continue to meet monthly as a group with the state mentor and receive support and feedback in the development of their work. Activities culminate with writers performing their works in the spring of 2010.

GRANTMAKERS IN THE ARTS, Seattle, Washington, received $10,780 in support of 2009 programs and services. An affinity group of the Council on Foundations, Grantmakers in the Arts provides leadership and service to advance the use of philanthropic resources on behalf of arts and culture. This national professional organization has institutional and individual members whose business is providing resources to strengthen arts and culture. It provides a range of programs and services such as member interest groups, member dialogue and cross-sector learning, publications, web services, an annual conference, research and the dissemination of information. Jerome Foundation has been a member of Grantmakers in the Arts since 1986.

GRAYWOLF PRESS, St. Paul, Minnesota, received $22,500 in support of the publication of five books by emerging authors, a majority of whom reside in Minnesota and/or the five boroughs of New York City. Founded in 1974, Graywolf Press is dedicated to the creation and promotion of thoughtful and imaginative contemporary literature essential to a vital and diverse culture. Graywolfs commitment to new and emerging writers, who need time to establish a readership, is a vital aspect of its nonprofit mission. Graywolf editors, with the help of interns, evaluate over 4,000 manuscripts each year. Decisions about which are published are made by the senior editorial staff, who look for a distinctive voice coupled with a distinct and unusual vision. The editors select titles that they believe break new ground in their ideas and use of language. The goal in publishing emerging writers is to introduce their vital work to a broad readership and to bring critical recognition to their artistic achievements.

CARTER GUNN & ROSS MCDONNELL were awarded a grant for Colony, a documentary that seeks to present an allegory of the state of the American nation through the voices of its commercial beekeepers. For the last two years, beekeepers have been battling the effects of the mysterious Colony Collapse Disorder, a disease that is wiping out massive numbers of honeybees, putting at risk over a third of the agricultural production of the United States and threatening a multibillion dollar industry. This film taps into many of the issues that are prevalent and pressing in our broader society, not just the world of the beekeeper. The environment, government, a future of uncertainty and a distrust of the other are all issues that unconsciously burden us. In a strange intertwining of the fate of man and insect, many of these issues are currently manifest in the plight of the American honeybee. Has this insect, selfless in its dedication to the colony above all else, prized by man for thousands of years, producer of what many say is the worlds only perfect food source, sounded some kind of alarm bell for humanity?

STEPHEN GUREWITZ, Golden Valley, Minnesota, was awarded a grant for Thanks Minnesota, a feature-length fictional narrative film about a father, divorced from his wife and estranged from his two grown sons, who spends his days alone in his familys deserted suburban home. After a doctors diagnosis that his cancer treatment is failing, he urgently plans a weekend camping trip with his sons. Without telling them about his condition, he attempts to resuscitate the father-to-son bond that he neglected in the past. The film explores themes of family, death and aging, as well as the courage necessary for a family to begin expressing intimacy and affection so late in life.

Directors authorized a grant of $8,820 to THE FIELD, New York City, acting as fiscal sponsor for MIGUEL GUTIERREZ & THE POWERFUL PEOPLE, to support the creation, development and production of the new evening-length work Misinterpreted (working title). Gutierrez has been producing work since 2001, and has received one previous grant from the Foundation. In Misinterpreted, Gutierrez will work with the idea of communication gone awry: the inadequacy, failure and mystery of language. By language, he means not only words but also organized patterns of communication that transmit coherent meaning, with structures as diverse as gesture, maps and architecture. The Field supports and sponsors the development, creation and presentation of musical, dance, theatrical, film and video works.

EMILY HADDAD, Stillwater, Minnesota, received a grant for a short experimental documentary titled Artist in the Margin, which explores the world of artist Pierre Prevost. It examines the questions: What impulse compels an artist to create, and Does an artist intend to affect his society and his environment? Haddad will explore how the special world created by Pierre Prevost demonstrates answers to these questions and how this modern artist can be related to prehistoric artists of the famous caves located in the same region of southern France where he lives. Haddad first entered the world of Pierre Prevost nine years ago. His home of Combarel (little hollow) is on several acres of forested land in the little-known region of Aveyron. Just a few miles away are the caves of Lascaux and Peche Merle, where prehistoric artists painted their environment and their imaginings, much like Prevost creates sculptures, drawings, paintings, and other forms of art from discarded objects he finds in junkyards and flea markets of surrounding villages. Haddad will examine his unique world, with an emphasis on its alignment with the similarly austere worlds of the cave artists of Lascaux and Peche Merle.

KATORI HALL, a playwright from New York City, will travel to Kigali, Rwanda, to learn about the Rwandan genocide through the Summer Rwandan Genocide Studies program. She will use the information she learns about the history, politics and current societal structure of Rwanda as the cultural context for a new play.

HARLEM STAGE/AARON DAVIS HALL, New York City, received $22,500 in support of emerging artists commissions within the 2009-10 Fund for New Work. Harlem Stage is a performing arts center that celebrates and perpetuates the unique and diverse artistic legacy of Harlem and the indelible impression it has made on American culture. It provides opportunity, commissioning, and support for artists of color; makes performances easily accessible to all audiences; and introduces children to the rich diversity, excitement, and inspiration of the performing arts. Through the Fund for New Work, Harlem Stage provides commissioning and development support to artists creating new works. The Jerome-supported part of the program provides emerging artists with commissions, subsidized rehearsal space, mentoring support with established artists and presenters, technical support, and other administrative and production support.

IN THE HEART OF THE BEAST PUPPET AND MASK THEATRE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $16,660 in support of the 2009 MayDay Mentor Program. In the Heart of the Beast is a professional puppet and mask theatre that brings people together for the common good through the power of puppet and mask performance. It combines original design, writing, music and movement to create puppet and mask productions that captivate audiences of all ages. For 35 years, it has produced the annual MayDay parade and festival. The Mentor Program, introduced in 2006, is designed to give emerging puppet and mask artists formalized training in the artistic process of creating community ceremonial productions. Skills are required in community organizing and teaching as well as artistic vision and technique. The Mentor Program builds skills sets in emerging artists and prepares them to assume leadership roles in ceremonial productions.

DARIN HEINIS was awarded support for Detachment, a narrative short about an Iraq War veteran who attempts to assimilate back into his prewar life, and his struggle with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Jack constantly revisits the horrors he witnessed in combat. He must confront those issues, and the dark shadow they cast on his life, in order to heal and finally realize that what happened in the past was not his fault. The story comes from a very personal place, as the filmmaker is a Gulf War veteran. Although he does not suffer from PTSD, he understands how the condition can be all consuming to those who do. Detachment is his attempt to tell the story of one mans struggle to conquer his war-related demons.

HERE ARTS CENTER, New York City, received $18,000 in support of the creation and development of new works by emerging artists participating in the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP). HARP nurtures the development of hybrid artists and their audiences, through cross-disciplinary exchange, peer-driven workshops, and panel discussions. HARP artists work at their own pace and in whatever directions their project requires. HARP has two primary components: development and production. The development aspect is thorough and intensive, including regular showings of works-in-progress and workshop presentations. In the production component, artists learn more about the creative and business elements of producing their work.