Past
Grantees

Media artist Liza Davitch, Minnetonka, Minnesota, received funding to attend the RealScreen Summit in Washington, D.C., where she will learn how to market and distribute her documentary films. Davitch is particularly interested in identifying her core audience and learning how to reach that audience. At the conference, she will network with established film professionals and attend classes that will teach her how to develop a comprehensive and strategic communications, marketing, and distribution plan for her work.

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.

Flamenco dancer and choreographer SUSANA DI PALMA was awarded a grant to spend three weeks in Barcelona, Spain. Di Palma will study with choreographers Montse Sanchez and Ramon Baeza from Increpacion Flamenco Dance Theatre. This trip will provide the inspiration and peer input that di Palma needs to continue creating work that is technically fresh and conceptually deep. Working with Increpacion, an all-female dance company, will also influence her recently formed female flamenco ensemble Majas.

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.

The DULUTH ART INSTITUTE, Duluth, Minnesota, received a grant of $15,000 to support the participation of emerging artists in the exhibition program. The mission of the Institute is to recognize, validate and support the creation of visual art in its diverse forms, and to encourage participation in, appreciation for and enjoyment of the visual arts. Artists shown in the exhibition program reflect a very broad range of aesthetics and media.

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.

ENSEMBLE STUDIO THEATRE, New York City, received a two-year commitment of $40,000 in support of developmental programs for emerging playwrights. ESTs primary goals are to nurture individual theater artists and to develop new American plays. Each year, it produces approximately 250 projects, which include staged readings, workshops and fully produced plays. Its Literary Department remains dedicated to reviewing unsolicited scripts, making it possible to discover and assist new playwrights. Its Institute for Professional Training provides classes in acting, directing and playwriting.

EXIT ART, New York City, received a two-year grant of $45,000 in support of the participation of emerging artists in the exhibition program. Founded in 1982, Exit Art provides a distinct perspective on contemporary culture by bringing under-recognized artists and areas of artistic production to public attention, thereby stimulating dialogue on diverse histories, values, and aesthetic sensibilities. It sees itself as an incubator for new ideas and aesthetics. Exit Arts commitment to emerging artists is deeply embedded in its overall programming philosophy.

A grant of $17,500 was authorized for EYE OF THE STORM THEATRE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in support of the development and production of new works by emerging playwrights in the 2001-02 season. Eye of the Storm produces risky work with a dual focus on commissioning and producing world premieres by Minnesota playwrights and producing regional premieres of provocative new plays on the national scene. Jerome support encompasses mainstage productions, readings, workshops, and the annual festival of new works Seed the Storm. In the festival, artists are commissioned to create the seeds of new plays, some of which may grow into future mainstage productions. This provides a mechanism to experiment with several project ideas on smaller scales and to establish working relationships with a more diverse group of playwrights.

Soprano ALISON FELDT, Northfield, was awarded a grant to spend three weeks in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland enhancing her authority in German repertoire, diction, and performance. Feldt will spend part of her time in Vienna researching the life and music of composer Joseph Marx for a future book project.

FENCE, New York City, received $7,000 in support of the publication of works by emerging writers, of whom a majority are residents of New York City and/or Minnesota. Founded in 1997 and published semiannually, Fence publishes poetry, short fiction, and essays on topics of historical and contemporary concern to illuminate and contextualize contemporary literature. Fence has the goal of fostering a broad "poetic literacy," introducing those who may previously have felt excluded from literary dialogue to a spectrum of contemporary writing. One of the specific goals of the magazine is to showcase emerging poets who may not have been widely read or published prior to their appearance in Fence. In 2002, Fence will step up its efforts to bring exposure to emerging writers, including those from New York city, through an expanded campaign of promotional activities, including a national reading series and increased marketing and promotions. In addition, more than half of the grant monies will go to pay authors' fees.

The FRANCONIA SCULPTURE PARK, Shafer, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $65,000 in support of emerging artists residencies. This sculpture park supports artists, conducts workshops and offers residency programs. Artists are invited to create work to be sited specifically for the park. They receive space in which to work, materials, technical assistance and honoraria. An open call for proposals yields a field of applicants who are reviewed by an artistic review committee. Jerome funds are earmarked for those artists who are emerging and who are based in Minnesota and New York City.

Jerome Directors awarded a grant of $22,000 to FRANKLIN ARTWORKS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in support of exhibitions of works by emerging artists in the 2001-02 season. The organizations mission is to enrich the Phillips Neighborhood, and the Twin Cities, with dynamic programming in the arts and arts education. Anne George, Ana Lois-Borzi, Rollin Marquette, and Patrick Maun, will exhibit new works in solo shows.

FRANKLIN FURNACE, New York City, was founded in 1976 as an archive of artists books, a performance art program for emerging artists and an exhibition program for time-based arts. Jerome has supported the Fund for Performance Art since 1985. This regranting program, using a competitive review process and an independent selection panel, awards emerging artists commissions of $2,000 to $5,000 to assist performance artists present their works at venues in New York City. On the occasion of its 20th Anniversary, Franklin Furnace transformed itself into a virtual institution; its website becoming its public face. In the spring of 1998, it launched a program of live art netcasts to a world wide audience. Jerome funding was also authorized for The Future of the Present 2001, a program in which virtual and web artists are given the resources they need to create new work and to place it on the web. The Foundations two-year commitment to both programs is $84,000.

Dancer and choreographer PENELOPE FREEH received funding to spend two weeks working with mentor and former colleague Donna Schoenherr in London, England. Freeh intends to reestablish their creative intimacy, create a new dance work, and broaden her artistic perspective. Freeh is a member of the James Sewell Ballet and recently started working as a choreographer. She frequently works with local choreographers to broaden her perspective but now needs to reconnect to Schoenherr. The two were working on a solo for Freeh in 1994 when life changes sent them in separate directions.

GALE GATES ET AL., Brooklyn, New York, received a two-year grant of $30,000 in support of the creation and development of new work. GAle GAtes is an experimental performance ensemble that draws from theater, music, opera, and visual and installation art in its creation of theatrical performance works. Jerome funding will be directed toward a new work by Michael Counts, Wine-Blue-Open-Water, a large-scale walkthrough performance installation, which takes its audience on a journey through an underworld where manifestations of the modern are connected to the ancient myth, using technology to create a world that resists easy definition. The second year of funding will focus on smaller performance installations created by Counts and other resident artists.