Past
Grantees

JOE SOLA was awarded support for The Anxiety of the Rented Room, a ten-minute experimental video about anxiety in hotel rooms. Mr. Sola will check into a business hotel in midtown Manhattan for a period of five days. He will not leave the hotel at any time, nor will he have any visitors apart from those that are instrumental to the workings of the hotel. With two video cameras, one surveillance camera and one Hi-8 camera, he will record his daily activities and his relationship to the environment as it deepens over time. The goal of this project is twofold; one intellectual and the other aesthetic. The visual narrative will articulate the attitudes and moods that exist within the mass produced, impersonal objects of the hotel room, ultimately exploring the spiritual void of this space. And aesthetically it will build a new visual vocabulary that uses the colors, patterns and textures of the objects in the hotel room. The mass produced objects of this room survive in a narrow bandwidth of color, density and saturation: Dull brown flowery bedspread, the crushed yellows of the low watt tungsten lights, the hazy white of the marble bathroom tile counter, the garden flower faucet, a lightly braised rust wallpaper, a frail pink lamp, and so on. The list is indefinite.

KAREN TORKELSON SOLGARD will travel to Telemark, Norway, for five weeks to study Hardanger fiddle in the tradition of Vinje, the community from which her grandparents emigrated. Solgard will learn from two aging Hardanger masters.

DEBRA SOLOMON was awarded support for EBP (aka, Everybody's Pregnant), an animated short which examines identity issues related to pregnancy. In the theatre of the body the individual must sacrifice to attain socially accepted goals. The goal for increasing numbers of women is pregnancy. Fertility in the end proves the self and is the final stamp of gender. This film pits the self-negation of infertility against the process of infertility treatment itself.

THE SOUTHERN THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $60,000 in support of programs serving emerging creative artists as well as the arts criticism section of the Southerns publication The Artists Voice. The Southern presents alternative performances by artists working at the grassroots of the Twin Cities varied cultural, political and economic communitiesartists who are creating performance that responds to situations that are often invisible to mainstream society. The Southern supports all performance media and artists who are working at all levels of career development. It is interested in work that blends forms, and artists who work collaboratively. The Southern presents artists who are developing new work that reflects personal artistic growth, and represents new aesthetic challenges.

THE FIELD, New York City, acting as fiscal agent for ROSEANNE SPRADLIN DANCE, received a grant of $6,000 in support of the ensembles 1998-99 season. Spradlin explores movement and themes that express emotional and physical states; and she creates work that reveals under-disclosed facets of human behavior. She believes that the exploration of ones physicalityhow ones history is carried in the body and how that history is expressed in movement, however unlovely and strange that movement may beis a pathway to emotional, intellectual and moral growth. Funding will contribute to the revision and touring of Ends of Mercy and the development of

Poet FRANCINE STERLE from Iron, received a grant to spend a month at a writers colony, where she will continue work on a series of poems.

A grant was awarded to choreographer and dancer ROBIN STIEHM to spend 30 days in Yaroslavl, Russia. Stiehm will attend an international dance festival and develop collaborations with Russian dancers.

Author JOYCE SUTPHEN will travel to Sligo, Ireland, to attend the 39th Annual Yeats International Writing Festival. Sutphen intends to establish relationships with writers.

The Jerome Foundation authorized $12,000 to DANCE THEATER WORKSHOP, New York City, acting as fiscal agent for choreographer WIL SWANSON AND DANCERS. The funds authorized will support the development and production of new work for Swansons 1998-99 season. Swanson, an exemplary dancer in the Trisha Brown Company, has choreographed sporadically over his dance career. A year ago, upon his departure from the Brown Company, he dedicated himself to choreographic and teaching pursuits, and secured support from the Jerome Foundation, among others, for his 1997-98 season at Dance Theater Workshop. For the upcoming season, Swanson will trim his company to five dancers in order to create a tighter ensemble and secure residencies. He is exploring the idea of unison, prompted in part by a commission he received from a dancer in the Lyon Opera Ballet to set a solo piece. He will take what hes learned from that commission and translate it to a unison group piece for six dancers, including himself

Artist and teacher CY THAO will spend one month traveling in Laos, Thailand and China. He will retrieve and compile Hmong art in order to inform his own contemporary painting.

THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY, New York City, was founded in 1970 as a center for new and innovative theater arts. Its purposes are to discover new plays, nurture and develop playwrights and act as a bridge between playwrights and audiences. Each year, it produces 30 to 40 new American plays by early and mid-career writers, the majority of whom are emerging. While the resources for each production are modest, the creators make their own decisions and pursue their own visions in production. A Jerome Foundation grant of $13,000 will enable Theater for the New City to provide ten commissions/creative subsidies to emerging playwrights in the 1998-99 season.

THEATRE COMMUNICATIONS GROUP, New York City, received $16,000 to continue the National Theater Criticism/Affiliated Writers Program. As the national service organization for the nonprofit professional theater, TCG undertakes numerous activities, including the publication of American Theatre magazine. In an effort to increase the amount and substance of arts criticism in that publication, TCG designed an Affiliated Writers Program for New York City and Minnesota-based critics, which attracted Jerome support in 1988. The purpose of the program is to foster the development of a corps of theater critics and journalists who are knowledgeable about the field as a whole; to raise critical standards; to increase the visibility of American Theatre as a forum for the publication of high quality critical writing; and to increase the public demand for serious criticism, persuading editors nationwide of its importance. Since its launch, 28 writers from Minnesota and New York City have participated in the program, contributing a total of 85 articles. A travel component allows the selected critics to make connections among geographically diverse programs.

MORGAN THORSON, dancer and choreographer, was awarded a grant to spend nine weeks in Seattle, Washington, to study and be certified in Skinner Release Technique. Thorson will study with Stephanie Skouras, Robert Davidson and Joan Skinner, the Techniques masters.

Two years of subsidy at $12,000 per year was granted to the SOUTHERN THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, as fiscal sponsor for MORGAN THORSON AND DANCERS. Thorson received support to develop and produce new work over the next two years, focusing on three projects. The first is a restaging of the dance Bottom Heavy. The second is a new solo for Thorson; and the third is the development of Toe the White Line. Bottom Heavy explores the fluidity and intermingling of sensuality, fantasy and sexuality in contemporary club social dancing. Toe the White Line will critique the behaviors associated with whiteness and privilege, layering movement phrases and exploring codes and systems that ensure the hierarchical existence of power, privilege, class distinction and lineage.

ERIC TRETBAR, a filmmaker, received funding to spend one month in New York City and one month in Los Angeles. Tretbar will build upon the attention generated by his latest films world premiere in the Los Angeles Independent Film Festival.

KIM-CHI TYLER was awarded support for what i remember of her, an intensely personal look into the life of her mother, who was forced into prostitution to support her children during the Vietnam War. It will recount Ms. Tylers memories of seeing her mother have sex with American soldiers, and the emotional prison of her mothers eventual marriage to an American. Visually the film will be shot from the point of view of Ms. Tyler, whose journey begins in America where she talks to people who knew her mother. She will eventually end up in Vietnam, the place of her birth, to visit her biological father and others who were well acquainted with her mother. An old Vietnamese proverb says, Go out one day, come back with a basket full of knowledge. Tyler hopes to achieve this through her quest to know her mother.

A grant was awarded to AERIN VANHALA and BRETT STATELY, public art muralists, to spend one month in Santiago, Cuba, attending the International Entrenos Mural Conference. They will work with more senior muralists to gain skills and knowledge in order to enhance their future work as public muralists in the Twin Cities area.

VOICE & VISION, New York City, received a grant of $14,000 in support of its 1998-99 season. Voice & Visions mission is to build an artistic home for the many women artists who feel under-served and under-represented by the art and imagery of the common culture. This theater places women at the core of every project it undertakes. Unheard Voices is the title of the play development program, which includes workshops, readings and full productions

The Jerome Foundation Directors authorized a two-year grant of $30,000 to VERY SPECIAL ARTS MINNESOTA, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in support of services offered to emerging professional artists and the Artist Recognition Grant Program. The mission of Very Special Arts Minnesota is to make the arts accessible to people with all types of disabilities throughout the state. Following a substantial assessment of the needs of the disability community, Very Special Arts Minnesota identified a particular program for which it sought Jerome assistanceArtist Recognition Grants. Minnesota artists with disabilities are invited to submit proposals to an independent panel, requesting assistance for a variety of purposes designed to advance their art. Artists working in all disciplines are eligible to apply.

The Jerome Foundation committed $29,000 to the WALKER ART CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in support of a series of on-line emerging artists projects. The Walker Art Center emphasizes the exhibition of 20th Century Art and the work of living artists. It is committed to the active engagement of audiences. Jerome funding is directed toward a new initiativea commissioning project in which the Walker will identify emerging artists whose work is made on-line and whose commissioned projects will be placed on the Walkers web-site gallery. The Walker believes that by highlighting and supporting the work of emerging new media artists, it will create a contextsupportive and criticalthat will help establish individual artists of merit and advance new media as a serious avenue of creative expression. Furthermore, given the emerging state of the medium, commissioned artists works will help museums and other institutions understand better how to utilize the vast potential of new media and the Internet to advance artistic missions.