Past
Grantees

SYMPHONY SPACE, New York City, received a grant of $15,000 in support of a Selected Shorts program in Minnesota. Symphony Space presents free or low-cost artistic programs representative of New York's many cultures. Its programming is varied and energetic. The mission of Selected Shorts is to foster the appreciation of short fiction and the spoken word through a variety of media. Jerome Foundation has been supporting the participation of emerging writers in that program for three years. In 1993, Symphony Space was invited by The Loft to select three Minnesota writers and to produce a program of readings in St. Paul in cooperation with Minnesota Public Radio. The Jerome Foundation Directors were interested in repeating that program offering. The event is scheduled for November of this year. It will be presented in the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, and promoted as part of the 20th Anniversary of The Loft's Mentor Series.

Jerome Foundation made a two-year grant commitment of $30,000 to the TEXTILE CENTER OF MINNESOTA, St. Paul, Minnesota, in support of programs and services for emerging textile artists in fiscal years 2000 and 2001. The Textile Center of Minnesota is a coalition of organizations and individuals dedicated to promoting excellence in the fiber arts and preserving textile traditions. The Center was created by fiber artists and patrons as a vehicle for shared information, education and economic opportunities for fiber artists in the upper Midwest. It began operations in 1992, and now has a membership of over 300 individuals and 19 organizations with over 5,000 collective members. The Center offers a wide variety of services to fiber artists, including exhibitions, educational seminars, lectures, workshops, a wearable art fashion show, a newsletter and calendar, a slide registry of artists' works and the eventual development of a shared space for textile artists and arts organizations. The Center is reaching out in effective ways to diversify its constituency. Jerome funding of $15,000 per year over two years will support the participation of emerging artists in Center programming.

THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY, New York City, received $17,500 toward emerging playwrights' commissions and production subsidies in the 1999-2000 season. Theater for the New City was founded in 1970 as a center for new and innovative theater arts, accessible to its community. Its purpose is to discover new plays, nurture and develop playwrights and act as a bridge between playwrights and audiences.

THEATRE COMMUNICATIONS GROUP, New York City, received a two-part grant of $52,000, over two years, in support of the Affiliated Writers program and an Emerging Playwrights Publication Program. Theatre Communications Group is the national service organization for the nonprofit professional theater in the United States. It provides a central forum and communications network for a field that is artistically, culturally, geographically and professionally diverse. Since 1988, Jerome Foundation has provided funding to the Affiliated Writers Program of American Theatre, a monthly general circulation magazine featuring national coverage of the theater. The program seeks to encourage and support a new, responsive generation of cultural reporters and critics, by establishing ongoing relationships with regionally-based artists. Jerome funding is restricted to writers living and working in New York City and the State of Minnesota. Since its launch, 31 critics from those two areas have participated in the program, contributing more than 90 articles. Jerome subsidy was also offered to the book Out of the Fringe: Contemporary Latino/a Performance in Theater, a volume that will feature 11 plays by Latino/a playwrights, four of whom are New York City-based, and one of whom is a former Jerome Playwright Fellow at The Playwrights Center in Minneapolis. Funding was also authorized for a single author book by either an emerging solo performance artist or an emerging playwright, yet to be selected.

ANNA THOMPSON/DEBORAH LEHMAN/MARY DARNALL, arts administrators at the College of Saint Benedict in St. Joseph, received funding to travel to Chico, California, to meet with Diavalo Dance Theater. Saint Benedict commissioned a new work from this company. Thompson, Lehman, Darnall and Diavolo members will develop dance residency activities to take place at the College in conjunction with the premiere in 2000.

The Jerome Foundation Directors made their first grant to THREAD WAXING SPACE, New York City, in support of the participation of emerging artists in the 1999-2000 season. Thread Waxing is a nonprofit arts and education space whose purpose is to promote and present works of art not ordinarily accessible to the public. It primarily exhibits and presents the works of emerging artists. Its annual operations include exhibitions, performances, readings, musical events, lectures and educational programs. Funding of $13,000 was authorized for the participation of emerging artists in such exhibitions as Foul Play and Achieving Failure--Gym Culture 2000.

AMY TOSCANI, sculptor, received funding in support of an artist residency at Sculpture Space in Utica, New York. She will spend two months in the studio as if it were a research laboratory, exploring process and materials, culminating in two or three large-scale pieces.

CHARISSA UEMURA and JOYCE YAMAMOTO, photographers and writers, will spend time within the Gila River Indian Community in Phoenix, Arizona, documenting the effects of US government action on Japanese American and Native people. Japanese American concentration camps were placed on Indian reservations during World War II. The artists envision producing several pieces from this experience, including an exhibit for the Minnesota Historical Societys Day of Remembrance in February 2000.

NITA VELO of Rothsay was awarded a grant to attend the Song School in Lyons, Colorado, to enrich her skills as a songwriter and performer.

VOICE & VISION, New York City, received a two-year grant of $30,000 toward the development of new work. This multifaceted theater organization emphasizes work by women. Jerome funding will support Envision, a two-year developmental theater process commencing with a summer retreat for women theater artists to be held in June of 2000, followed by an artists' laboratory in New York City in the 2000-2001 season. It is expected that three to five projects will emanate from the retreat and the laboratory, with the final shapes determined by the core artists.

The WALKER ART CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, sustains an artistic program that champions the new and untested while charting groundbreaking historical research into the work of 20th Century masters. Programs in the visual, performing and media arts support and present some of the most important artists and ideas of our time. Funding of $34,000, over two years, was authorized for the Dialogues exhibition program. The Walker invites three emerging artists from the Twin Cities and three from New York City to exhibit in pairs in three shows in Gallery 7. The artists are given commissioning fees and funds for materials, as well as transportation subsidy and per diems to visit each others studios to explore the possibility of collaborations. The shows are accompanied by full-color mini-catalogs documenting the works of the artists and including critical texts by the curator, as well as biographies and interviews. The first Dialogues exhibition covered by this grant features works by Paul Beatty and Wing Young Huie. The other pairings have yet to be determined.

CONNIE WANEK, a writer based in Duluth, received a grant to travel to Las Cruces, New Mexico, for study and reflection, and to stimulate new work related to current themes in her poetry.

THE DALE WARLAND SINGERS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $64,000 in continued support of the New Choral Music Program. This program draws submissions from emerging composers throughout the country, with an emphasis on those residing in Minnesota or New York City. Four finalists receive a stipend to complete a five to seven-minute work which is performed in a reading session by The Dale Warland Singers. Each year one of the four is commissioned to create a 12 to 20-minute composition which is premiered as part of the choral ensembles annual season The composers are also involved in a variety of activities designed to strengthen their work and professional development as composers.

With the fiscal sponsorship of the NEW YORK FOUNDATION FOR THE ARTS, New York City, composer ANDREW WARSHAW received funding to develop The Sparks, The Ringing: An African-American Jewish Oratorio. This evening-length music-theater piece for full choirs of African-American men and boys, and Jewish men and boys, is set in the fever-dream of an African-American musicologist who has fathered a Jewish child. The libretto ranges over 5,000 years of Jewish, African and African-American history, and explores the musicologist's visions from Pharaonic Egypt to Harlem of the early 20th Century. The work will be sung in 11 languages by choirs, nearly a dozen soloists and an instrumental ensemble. Jerome support of $8,000 was authorized to continue the development of the piece.

Jazz artist DONALD WASHINGTON will travel to Detroit, Michigan, to conduct a reunion of the Bird-Trane-SCO-Now! Ensemble which he founded twenty years ago. The ensemble is named for jazz greats Charlie Parker, John Coltrane and Roscoe Mitchell.

SASHA WATERS was awarded support for Life in These Small Hollows, a half-hour documentary about coal field residents in southern West Virginia and their efforts to save their homes from the ruinous effect of mountaintop strip mining.

ANTHONY WHITE will spend three weeks in San Francisco studying shadow craft with Larry Reed, Artistic Director and Master Puppeteer of Shadowlight Productions. White will combine shadow craft with other artistic and theatrical forms to breathe new life into old stories.

Funding of $20,000 was authorized for the WOMEN'S PROJECT & PRODUCTIONS, New York City, in support of developmental theater programs in the 1999-2000 season. Founded in 1978, the Women's Project & Productions nurtures women playwrights and directors, produces their plays in an environment that values their creativity, and cultivates an audience for that work now and into the future. It has presented over 100 full productions and hundreds of readings and workshops. Jerome support subsidizes the participation of emerging playwrights in several of the theater's programs including a rehearsed reading series, a works-in-progress season, a playwrights' lab and Tandem Acts.

JUAN CARLOS MARTINEZ-ZALDIVAR received support for 90 MILES, an intensely personal, short video documentary about the emotional wounds Cubans and Cuban-Americans live with everyday because of the deep divide separating the United States and Cuba.

Independent radio producer JENNY ZANNER was awarded funding for a trip to New York City and Syracuse, New York and Warren, Rhode Island to conduct interviews for an audio documentary, From Repeal to Roe v. Wade: An Oral History of Abortion Providers in New York, 1970-1973.