Past
Grantees

AMERICAN INDIAN ARTISTS, INC., New York City, acted as fiscal agent for two projects conceived by visual artist GREGORY LEE PICKARD, and titled EXPO 2000. Founded in 1987, American Indian Artists advocates, enhances and promotes the growth of emerging and established Native artists of the Americas in the visual, performing, literary and media arts through a variety of programs and services. Packards works are intended to provoke thought, invite questioning and induce contemplation. Jerome funding of $15,000 was authorized for Powwow, which involves Native American teepees floating/congregating on the waters of New York Harbor. The second, Boat Show, features three boats, filled with water and video monitors carrying the faces of children and the voices of Native American ancestors, to be exhibited in a gallery. Pickard describes himself as a conceptual artist, and a composer of ideas, using cultural imagery and iconography.

A grant of $4,000 was authorized for PILLSBURY NEIGHBORHOOD SERVICES, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in support of the development of a new play by writer Dwight Hobbes. The Hobbes play Shelter will be presented in the 1999 season of the Pillsbury House Theatre, which aims to produce provocative plays by American playwrights, both established and emerging. Shelter is described as a grim, unsparing account of one mans descent into homelessness. It attacks a system that pits oppressed against oppressed, as three African Americans living in a shelter fight to get on an exclusive list for better housing.

The Jerome Foundation has supported emerging playwrights in residence and the development of their works at THE PLAYWRIGHTS CENTER in Minneapolis since 1976. A two-year grant of $158,000 was authorized to subsidize the Jerome Fellowship Program, Many Voices initiatives and services to emerging member playwrights. The Playwrights Center fuels the theater providing services to support playwrights and playwriting. It is committed to the following core values: artistic excellence, playwright initiative and leadership, the practice of cultural pluralism, the discovery of emerging artists, advocacy of playwrights and their work, and new visions of theater. The Center is a regional and national resource for script development, providing a range of services for writers at all stages of their careers and including public readings, workshops, classes, conferences, roundtables, residencies and fellowships. The Jerome Fellowship Program, operating since 1976, provides monetary and developmental support to emerging American playwrights who have had no more than two professional productions of their work. Jerome Fellows have priority access to the Centers creative resources, including the Lab program. Many Voices was created in 1992 to give writers of color better access to Center programs. In addition to services and Laboratory development, Many Voices regrants funds in the form

THE POETRY PROJECT at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, New York City, received $16,000 to support a Manuscript Development Workshop and a Seminar Series. For 33 years, The Poetry Project has sponsored programs supporting new and experimental poetry. They include reading series, performance series, emerging forms, multimedia events, writing workshops in a variety of genres and styles, a newsletter, a literary magazine, symposia, lectures, discussions, the annual New Year's Day marathon reading, publication parties and special events. The Manuscript Development Workshop will assist six to ten emerging poets in the preparation of full-length poetry manuscripts. The workshop will be taught by a published poet, with extensive editorial experience, over 26 two-hour weekly sessions. Subsidy was also authorized for single-session seminars taught by prominent writers, critics, editors and translators. They'll cover a variety of subjects from surveying trends in the current scene to finding audiences and readership for one's work.

The GIVENS FOUNDATION FOR AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $10,100 to support the further development of THEOLOGY: Love & Revolution by J. OTIS POWELL!. Its first form was a published prose poem, then a performance art event. With Jerome subsidy, THEOLOGY will now become an expanded text published by Spout Press and a CD recording.

PRIMARY STAGES, New York City, received $13,000 to support the New American Writers Group. For 14 years, Primary Stages has developed and produced new works by American playwrights. In 1996, Associate Producer Seth Gordon began sponsoring the New American Writers' Group to nurture the development of early-career playwrights. This is a structured forum to write new material and receive critical feedback, on a weekly basis. As further developmental steps, Primary Stages schedules readings and workshops. Eventually, it will produce a mainstage festival of new plays.

WALID RAAD received support for Hostage, an experimental documentary about the Western Hostage Crisis. The crisis refers to the abduction and detention in Lebanon in the 1980's and early 1990's of western men such as Terry Anderson, Thomas Sutherland, Terry Waite and Brian Keenan by so-called Islamic Militants. This episode directly and indirectly consumed Lebanese, US, French, and British political and public life. The crisis also precipitated a number of high profile political scandal like the Iran-Contra affair in the US, and L'Affaire Gordgi in France.

SUSAN RAFFO, writer, will spend four weeks in New York City to conduct research for her book How I Became Italian. Raffo will visit different Italian American neighborhoods in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island.

APARNA RAMASWAMY, dancer and choreographer in the Bharatanatyam style of India, was awarded a grant to travel to Indonesia. She will conduct in-depth research in the Kecak style of dance and music, which will be incorporated into her work with Ragamala Music and Dance Theater.

Morris resident JODY RAMBO will travel to Corning, New York, to conduct research at the Rakon Research Library on women in the United States glass industry, particularly in relation to mirror-making. The research will be used as source material for a book of poems.

POLA RAPAPORT received support for Family Secret, a nonfiction film about Rapaport's discovery in the last few months of a half-brother she never knew existed, who is now in his fifties and lives in Romania.

RED EYE COLLABORATION, Minneapolis, Minnesota, was awarded a two-year grant of $40,000 in support of its varied and substantial work with emerging creative artists. Founded in 1983 by Steve Busa and Miriam Must, Red Eye presents multimedia theater, and functions as a creative laboratory. It is a producer and developer of experimental art. Funding will be used to support the participation of emerging artists in the Works-in-Progress series, now in its 15th year, and in Isolated Acts, a seven-week celebration of the artistic drive to pursue fresh challenges and create new works.

A grant was awarded to writer CHERYL REED to spend four weeks in Colorado Springs, Colorado; Albuquerque, New Mexico; Los Angeles and San Francisco, California; and Salt Lake City, Utah. She will complete research for a literary journalism book on the lives of Catholic nuns.

CRAIG RENAUD received support for This World, a feature-length documentary that tells the two-year story of an inner-city youth, from the projects of Harlem, who struggles to lift up his family from the hardships of ghetto life.

A two-year grant of $28,000 was awarded to REPERTORIO ESPAOL, New York City, in support of the Voces Nuevas series. Repertorio Espaol was founded in 1968 to produce the finest Spanish-language theater; to create and maintain a professional company of actors, singers and directors to perform works in the Spanish language; to serve as a catalyst for cultural exchange; and to reach a broad audience. In 1993, Voces Nuevas began to take form as Repertorio sought effective ways to develop new plays for production. Jerome funding will continue to support the readings program, held on Monday evenings and open to the public, as well as a series of workshop productions, designed to develop new works by emerging playwrights.

DEMPSEY RICE received a grant for Daughter of Suicide, a personal documentary about the suicide of the filmmaker's mother and the path her family has taken to heal.

ROBERT "EDDIE" ROBINSON, gospel singer and choir director, received funding to attend the 1999 Gospel Music Workshop of America in New Orleans, Louisiana, for the purpose of deepening professional relationships with gospel groups and artists and learning from other gospel choir directors.

Artist KAY RUANE received a grant to study with Vincent Desidario and Betye Saar at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, Vermont. She will focus on her current work, which places a female figure within a landscape to explore the relationship of ones physical, spiritual and psychological self to ones body and environment.

Xcp is a journal devoted to poetry, poetics, ethnography and cultural and ethnic studies. It is published under the auspices of the COLLEGE OF SAINT CATHERINE, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota. Xcp highlights emerging writers and artists with diverse cultural perspectives. It began as a reading series for local and national writers at the College; and soon grew to encompass a journal, community workshops, a major conference, an interactive web site and readings at other local venues. A majority of the authors whose works appear in the journal are emerging. The publication was first supported by the Jerome Foundation in 1998. A second, two-year grant of up to $24,000 was authorized to continue publication and to pay writers' fees.

ST. JOHN'S UNIVERSITY, Collegeville, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $54,000 to continue the Emerging Artist in Residence Program at the St. John's Pottery Studio. Under the direction of artist Richard Bresnahan, the Pottery Studio educates students and artists in the philosophy and practices of sustainable resource development, involves them in an indigenous artistic environment within an academic setting and assists local communities with the sustainable development of indigenous resources. The Emerging Artist in Residence Program supports three artists annually selected through a competitive application process. Jerome Foundation has supported the Residency Program since 1984. This most recent grant will subsidize six emerging artists' residencies over a two-year period. Each will be in residence for two months, will receive a travel and living stipend, and will have full access to the studio and free materials.