Past
Grantees

AMY JENKINS received a grant for Sheltering for Daydreaming, From the Same Water and Whirligig, a video installation, composed of three segments, that will investigate the home as a locus for memory, expectation and metamorphosis.

Kirsten Johnson/Julia Pimsleur - Innocent Until Proven Guilty, a one-hour video documentary about one African-American's struggle with the criminalization of black men in America. The son of prominent civil rights activists, James Foreman, Jr. was raised with the acute awareness of social responsibility. When he completed a law degree at Yale University, Forman was awarded a prestigious Supreme Court clerkship. From that post, he could have gone to any number of highly paid law positions; instead he chose to become a public defender in Washington, DC, where the crime rate is one of the highest in the country. At only 29, he juggles up to a dozen clients at a time, including some of the Public Defender Service's most challenging juvenile cases. This film takes us inside the criminal justice system, tracking Forman's relationship with three of his young clients-one imprisoned one acquitted, and one awaiting trail. Through Forman's experiences and insights as a public defender, the film explores the criminalization of a community and how James Forman lives with its legacy while trying to transform its future.

Choreographer and dancer MORRIS JOHNSON received support for the creation of new work through the fiscal sponsorship services of the MINNESOTA DANCE ALLIANCE, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Johnsons choreography is a fusion of cultures, which brings together the beliefs of diverse peoples and communities to celebrate the common bonds of creative expression. The Jerome Foundation made a commitment of $7,500 toward the development of Naga, a piece revolving around the themes of tradition and change, realized through a young womans quest for independence. Naga explores the nuances of the father/daughter relationship and the power of the spiritual world to guide peoples choices.

PERFORMANCE SPACE 122, New York City, acting as fiscal agent for independent artist SARAH EAST JOHNSON, received a grant of $10,000 in support of the development of a new concert-length work titled Volcano Love, her fifth evening length production of multi-media acrobatic work. Johnsons work comes from a background in dance, but also integrates her experiences as a circus performer, athlete and student of geology and environmental science. Her movements are cultivated from sources that include contact improvisation, acrobatics, trapeze, collegiate and professional style wrestling, human pyramids and much more. Her new work is a continuation of her exploration into the volcanic activity of the earth, the rhythm of flows and explosions, and plate tectonic theory that describes how volcanic activity occurs.

THE JUNGLE THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two part grant in support of the Storytelling series and the commissioning of artists' works for the new Jungle Theater facility. The Jungle is intent upon producing plays, storytelling and performance art which challenge audiences to end ignorance, to embrace honesty and straightforwardness and to seek a more inclusive and generous society. Continued support of $10,000 for the Storytelling series, under the curatorial direction of Loren Niemi, enables the participation of emerging tellers in an ongoing program which features the rich art of storytelling. In 1998, The Jungle expects to organize the Storytelling series in a festival format, incorporating a mentoring program serving emerging tellers in the region. An additional commitment of $34,000 was made to subsidize artists' projects for the new facility of The Jungle Theater on Lyndale Avenue in Minneapolis. The Jungle has identified certain parts of its new facility which may be independently designed by artists, selected through a competitive and open application process. These installed works include murals, the facade for the central concession/box office area, and the design and creation of exterior neon/incandescent signage. Painters, woodcrafters, sculptors, neon artists, graphic artists, scenic painters and scenic designers will be eligible to compete for these commissions.

The Directors authorized a grant of $18,000 to the JUNGLE THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in support of its 1998 Play Reading Series and Festival. The Jungle aims to produce works that challenge people to end ignorance, embrace honesty and straightforwardness and seek a more inclusive and generous society. It defines an emerging creator as one whose work is as yet unrecognized by mainstream theaters and audiences and one whose work has not yet received the recognition and transforming experience which can come with professional direction and the refining fire of public performance. In the Play Reading Series, six plays are selected from a competitive field for a festival of readings, with one of those plays given a fully mounted staged reading, under the artistic direction of Bain Boehlke. Diverse nominators refer playwrights to the Jungle Theater for review. In light of the significant work which was accomplished in 1997 in the first year of this program design, the Jerome Foundation Directors authorized continued support.

The NRITYA JYOTI DANCE THEATRE, Crystal, Minnesota, received a grant of $10,000 toward the creation of new work for the 1998-99 season. Founded in 1987, Nritya Jyoti Dance Theatres mission is to present, promote and strengthen the understanding and advancement of the classical dance of India through creation, preservation and sponsorship of artistic and cultural endeavors. Artistic Director Rita Mustaphi bases her work on the Kathak dance of India, a classical form with a 2000-year history. With the intermingling of original choreographic dance pieces by Mustaphi and scripted dialogue, Nritya Jyoti blends dance and theater in concerts that reflect multicultural experiences.

BARRY KIMM, a filmmaker and videographer, will spend three weeks in Sacramento, California, examining how that city is implementing innovative arts programs to revitalize crime-ridden neighborhoods. Kimm plans to translate that inquiry into a documentary film.

Funding was awarded to SUSAN KORDA in support of Either/Or, a 60-minute experimental documentary that looks at how the personalities and destinies of a Holocaust survivor's two children were molded by the experiences of their parents.

SUE KOSMALSKI is an installation artist and arts administrator. Kosmalski received a grant to travel to New York City, Washington DC and Los Angeles for a total of four weeks over the next eight months. She will research video, film, newsreel and record libraries on the East and West Coasts to inform the creation of two new works.

A commitment of $14,000 was made to THE KITCHEN, New York City, as fiscal agent for choreographer Jennifer Monson. Monson received support to develop three dances to be premiered in the upcoming season. She will investigate energetic approaches to choreography and movement, and the relationship between music and dance. A small portion of the grant will be used to mount a previously completed work, Sender, at Intermedia Arts, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1999. She will incorporate two Minneapolis-based dancers in the cast and will undertake a variety of community outreach efforts in the area

ERNEST LARSEN was awarded support for Yellow Cab, a point of view Hi-8 video documentary revolving around his re-emergence as a New York City cabdriver. What he's after is the archetypal American story as it is lived today, when you're only another bottom dog (in Edward Dahlberg's memorable phrase) in a tough city, and you know you have to make your way up. He is also after a portrayal of a culture that everybody in the city thinks they see everyday, but don't scarcely get more than the merest glance at; they never see it from the inside. This video will examine work as necessity and obsession, with relentless detailing of the life of the cabbie, the never-ending need to get the next fare, to get rid of that fare as soon as possible so as to find the next one, the brutal competition for fares, the calculations involved in where and when to go, and the nightmare of routine.

ALMAE LARSON, an artist and education coordinator who lives in Dodge Center, will spend nine days at the Holy Spirit Retreat Center in Janesville, Minnesota. Her purpose is to investigate body as nature, body in nature and self identity while creating photographs about nature, culture and identity.

T.J. LARSON, Minneapolis, MN, $15,000. Larson received support for Stories from the Bottle, a 90-minute, 16mm narrative about the value of simple human companionship, as reflected through the relationships among various misfits and outcasts at Mickey's Diner.

KATHLEEN LAUGHLIN, Minneapolis, MN, $10,000. Laughlin received support for Reinventing Power: Origins of the Battered Women's Movement, a 58-minute video documentary on the genesis of the women's shelter movement as reflected through the actions of organizations such as Women's Advocates. Interestingly, this enormously empowering phenomenon, which spread throughout the world, began in St. Paul, Minnesota.

CROSS PERFORMANCE, New York City, received a grant of $30,000 to support the completion of Conservators Dream, a 30-minute film featuring choreographer/performers Ralph Lemon and Bebe Miller, filmed in collaboration with Isaac Julien and with text generated by bell hooks. This grant is an example of the Foundations very limited program focus on established, mid-career artists who are facing critical junctures in their work and who have unusual opportunities to make new work that is a significant challenge for them. Conservators Dream explores an emotionally amorphous relationship between an African-American woman and man, and revolves around interior and physical dialogues with spoken texts and movement that present a complicated love affair. The man is a somewhat shadowy but powerful figure; the woman finds a voice over his power that compels her to break away.

JENNY LION, St. Paul, MN, $19,000. Lion received support for Aloha Goodbye, a 30-minute, 16mm experimental documentary that is part faked travelogue and part actual historical investigation, which employs a highly unusual approach to representing political and individual history and memory.

A grant was made to poet ROSEANN LLOYD to spend four weeks traveling in Norway, Wales and Scotland collecting information for her current poetry book-in-progress, Directions: From the South to the North.

The Jerome Foundation Directors elected to continue their support of the Creative Nonfiction Program at THE LOFT, Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Loft is a nationally recognized, community-based literary center whose mission is to foster a writing community, the artistic development of individual writers and an audience for literature. Since 1985, The Loft has annually brought a nationally acclaimed writer of creative nonfiction to the Twin Cities to work with six emerging writers in a month-long mentoring program that includes discussions and critique in eight evening workshops, individual manuscript evaluations and a public reading. The writer-in-residence is selected by Loft staff based upon recommendations from previous participants as well as other writers and literature faculty members. An open call for applicants yields a group of emerging creative nonfiction writers who are interested in participating in the program. The national writer-in-residence reviews the anonymous submissions and selects participants who show promise in their craft and who would benefit from the intensive mentoring experience. Jerome funding over two years of $38,000 was authorized.

THE LOFT, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant commitment of $66,000 in continued support of the Mentor Series, an activity the Foundation has been supporting since 1979. The Loft is a nationally recognized, community based literary center. Its mission is to foster a writing community, the artistic development of individual writers and an audience for literature. The Mentor Series is a vehicle for emerging Minnesota writers to work in small group settings with nationally recognized writers, who mentor in several ways ranging from reviewing their work to providing inspiration and an example of the writing life. The mentors spend concentrated periods of time with the Minnesota writers. Both poets and fiction writers are eligible for this program. The Loft selects participants on the basis of a competitive review process.