Past
Grantees

JEFF SHAMES and JOHNATHAN SKURNIK received funding for Stutter Step, an hour-long documentary about how Shames came to accept and even appreciate his lifetime of stuttering, after a childhood of frustration and shame. With humor and compassion, the filmmaker seeks to understand why he, and people like him, can't talk like everybody else.

The NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York City, also served as fiscal agent for choreographer BILL SHANNON, whose movement vocabulary merges an abstract neo medical sensibility with urban street style kinetics, extending into disability culture as reflected through a personal history of the use of crutches. Support of $10,000 was authorized for a new group work, evening-length, in which Shannon will blend a range of dance forms including break-dancing, popping and capoeira. It will explore a deeper range of connected movements among dancers, with special attention to footwork. Shannon will continue to develop his work with a core group of performers through a collaborative process.

RICHARD SHELTON, St. Paul, MN, was awarded a grant in support of The Coonhuntin Stories of Boo Larington, an animated narrative based on the stories of Boo Larington, an Iowa farmer. Larington is a raccoon hunter and mule trader in southern Iowa. He started hunting and trading over 40 years ago and has one of the best reputations in the Midwest. He is a man with history, who is very gifted in the tradition of storytelling. This animated film reveals those gifts.

SKEWED VISIONS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received funding of $12,500 in support of The Orange Grove Project. Skewed Visions is a performance company specializing in works that engage in and are engaged by their specific physical environment. The Orange Grove Project, written by company co-founder Gulgun Kayim, explores family, memory, language, culture, and migration. The play traces Kayims family journey from the troubled island of Cyprus to England.

Sculptor GERALD SMITH received funding to visit the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, where he will study the Museums collection of 1950s US satellites and review literature concerning the social, political, and military climate in the US during the early years of the space race. Smith wishes to address the cynicism in current attitudes about space exploration by looking at the origins of space flight and reconnecting to its hope and optimism. Smith constructs satellites and rocket noses using source information found in literature and photos. He needs to see the real thing.

Writer GARY SMOLIK was awarded a grant to spend seven days at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC., where he will take a rubbing of his friends name from the Wall. He will research his friends military history at the Veterans Administration Office. Smolik has a deep need to understand his friends military journey and the circumstances of his death. The experience will contribute to a personal essay to be included in Smoliks memoir.

SOHO REPERTORY THEATRE, New York City, produces new and experimental theater productions. It fully produces two to three plays per season plus numerous readings and workshops of new plays. It calls itself a hothouse for exuberant theatrical work. Craft, imagination, innovation, and an expansive artistic experience are valued above all else. A two-year grant of $20,000 was authorized in support of the development of new work by emerging playwrights.

A grant was awarded to photographer ALEC SOTH so that he may develop a monograph about the Mississippi River by driving 3,700 miles along the river and visiting particular spots and people along the way. Soth is looking at six locations along the river that capture the particularly American understanding of freedom he feels the river represents.

Funding was awarded to ALONZA RICO SPEIGHT in support of Where Are They Now?, a documentary portrayal of African-American and Black South African young people, now "twenty-somethings", that compares their political and cultural perspectives. This work is a follow-up to an earlier documentary profile of the same individuals when they were teens.

RESOURCES AND COUNSELING FOR THE ARTS, St. Paul, Minnesota, offers services to artists, including workshops and support groups, individual consultations, a loan fund, a legal referral service, arts administration job listings and job services, speaking engagements, telephone information and referral, informational booklets, a quarterly newsletter and a resource library. Jerome Foundation made a commitment of $60,000 over two years toward the direct provision of services to individual emerging artists. Of that amount, $10,000 constitutes a financial aid fund for artists who cannot afford to pay the standard rate for technical assistance.

Painter MELISSA STANG received a grant to spend two weeks in Paamul, Mexico, where she will continue a drawing project based on Mexican architecture and natural ecosystems containing reptiles, amphibians, mollusks, and rich marine environments. Shell set up a studio in Paamul to photograph, draw, and study.

THE SOUTHERN THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $12,000 on behalf of choreographer ROBIN STIEHM, who lives and works in Sandstone, Minnesota. In 2001, Stiehm will develop three major projects including a solo to be made on dancer Eric Boone as well as a womens quartet created to original music by New York composer Annie Gosfield, who will travel to Minneapolis to perform live with the company. Stiehm will also rework and remount her full evening work titled City.

Percussionists JEFF STROM and ERIC STROM received funding to spend 16 days participating in the Princeton Marimba Festival in New Jersey where they will study with world-renowned keyboard artists and connect with an international consortium of colleagues and mentors. The Stroms, known as x2 (Times Two), are an emerging mallet percussion duo.

SYMPHONY SPACE, New York City, received a two-year grant of $20,000 in support of the participation of New York City and Minnesota emerging writers in Selected Shorts: A Celebration of the Short Story. The mission of Selected Shorts is to foster the appreciation of short fiction and the spoken word through a variety of media. Selected Shorts provides broad exposure for emerging authors by having their works read by actors to live audiences and broadcast by more than 120 public radio stations throughout the country.

KAREN TAULELLE, St. Paul, MN, received funding to support CARNY, an hour-long documentary on the Stipe family and the fourth generation business that they own in a small Midwestern community. Theyre not so different from other Midwestern families. Theyre large. Theyre Catholic. They could be farmers, but they own a carnival. This is a portrait of a proud family in a business that conjures visions of hucksters, freaks and vagabonds.

Jerome Foundation Directors made a grant of $15,000 to the TEXTILE CENTER OF MINNESOTA, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in support of programs and services for emerging textile artists. The Center is a coalition of fiber organizations dedicated to promoting excellence in the fiber arts and preserving textile traditions. It offers fiber artists exhibition opportunities, educational seminars, lectures, workshops, a newsletter and calendar, a slide registry of member artists' works, the Artwear in Motion show, and access to a new dye lab. Expanded programming will take place in the Centers new building.

THEATRE COMMUNICATIONS GROUP, (TCG) New York City, received a two-year grant of $32,000 in support of the Affiliated Writers Program and a grant of $5,000 in support of the publication of a book of works by Roger Guenveur Smith. TCG works to strengthen, nurture and promote the American nonprofit theater. In 1988, TCG launched the National Theater Criticism/Affiliated Writers Program, which encourages and supports a new and more responsive generation of cultural reporters and critics by establishing ongoing relationships between American Theatre editors and writers in New York City and Minnesota. Thirty-seven writers from these two areas have participated in the program thus far, contributing more than 100 articles to the magazine. A travel component allows writers to research stories that make connections among geographically diverse undertakings. A grant of $5,000 was made to an emerging playwrights publication program operated by the Publications Division of TCG. Solo performance artist Roger Guenveur Smith will have his strong body of works published.

THEATRE COMMUNICATIONS GROUP, (TCG) New York City, received a two-year grant of $32,000 in support of the Affiliated Writers Program and a grant of $5,000 in support of the publication of a book of works by an emerging playwright. TCG works to strengthen, nurture and promote the American nonprofit theater. In 1988, TCG launched the National Theater Criticism/Affiliated Writers Program, which encourages and supports a new and more responsive generation of cultural reporters and critics by establishing ongoing relationships between American Theatre editors and writers in New York City and Minnesota. Thirty-seven writers from these two areas have participated in the program thus far, contributing more than 100 articles to the magazine. A travel component allows writers to research stories that make connections among geographically diverse undertakings. A grant of $5,000 was made to an emerging playwrights publication program operated by the Publications Division of TCG.

MARIE-FRANOISE THEODORE, St. Paul, MN, received support for Rebel in the Soul, an experimental narrative short on the intersection of the lives of two women who have never met. One of them was savagely lynched by a vicious mob and her unborn child cut from her body, and the other a sculptor who became obsessed with the lynching.

Puppet and theater artist DUANE A. TOUGAS received funding to spend 23 days in Vermont where he will study puppet theater with Eric Bass and Sandglass Theater at Marlboro College. He intends to explore and advance his puppet performance skills.