Past
Grantees

Filmmaker MARK TANG will visit Hong Kong to witness the 1997 changeover in sovereignty, to study its impact on the local film community and its broader ramifications on Asian-American communities and Hollywood film culture, and to have an opportunity for artistic cultural and intellectual renewal. This will be Tang's return to his birthplace and former homeland after a continuous stay of more than 12 years in the United States.

Writer MARCELLA TAYLOR received support to travel to the Bahamas, her birthplace, to re-create links with that culture and the writers and artists there. She will write, in journal form and poetry, do readings and present a performance piece. She will also conduct research for future writing and performance projects.

Teatro Latino was awarded its first grant from the Jerome Foundation for $13,000 in support of playwrights and play development over the coming season. This multicultural, community-based theater was established to nurture social and cultural awareness within the Latino community and the general population. It primarily produces literary works by Latino/a authors. Jerome subsidy will assist Teatro in working with a range of playwrights over the coming year.

The Jerome Foundation Board authorized its second grant of $9,000 to the TEXTILE CENTER OF MINNESOTA, St. Paul, Minnesota, in support of programming and artists services in the 1996-97 year. This Center was created through the work and vision of fiber artists who needed a place to pursue shared information, education and economic opportunities in the Upper Midwest. Founded in late 1992, the Center has a membership of more than 155 individuals and 17 organizations. The Center mounts an annual Members Show and benefit, sponsors a series of lectures and workshops by textile artists, publishes a quarterly newsletter and a coordinated calendar, maintains a registry of slides of textile works by Minnesota artists and offers a textile telephone hotline which provides current information about events throughout the region. Programs to be implemented in future years include fellowships, textile fairs and juried art shows.

Rafael Viera, Minnetonka, MN, $6,000. For the production of "The Stall", a short narrative film about the struggle to survive mentally and physically the anguish, pain and brutalities of incarceration, to be set in a single prison bathroom stall.

The Plymouth Music Series, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $21,000 in support of the Orchestra Reading Project, which provides valuable orchestral reading sessions under the direction of Plymouth Music Series conductor Philip Brunelle. Each reading session serves four emerging composers.

VOICE & VISION, New York City, received a grant of $8,000 to support the production of a new work, FireDance, by Chiori Miyagawa. The mission of Voice & Vision, founded by Marya Mazor and Jean Wagner, is to build an artistic home for the many women who feel under-served and under-represented by the art and imagery of mainstream culture. As an investment in an emerging organization, as well as an emerging creator, the Jerome Foundation authorized subsidy.

The WALKER ART CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year $28,000 grant for three Viewpoints exhibitions in which an emerging artist based in New York City and one based in the Twin Cities will be invited to exhibit together, and to consider the possibility of collaborating on a joint installation resulting from the response to each others work. The Viewpoints series will support substantially the work of these artists and act as a catalyst for new and experimental pieces.

The WALKER ART CENTER, Minneapolis, received $14,600 to support artists commissions and production fees for programs emanating from the Performing Arts Department. Funding was authorized for Spine, Shawn McConneloug, Lily Tsong, Heidi Arneson and Laurie Van Wieren. The presentation of their work will center on two multidisciplinary program series at the Walker, the first on Beat Culture: 1950-1965 and the second a retrospective program of German artist Hannah Hch.

Choreographer DIANE WALLER received support to work with John Boesche, one of the leading projection designers in the country. Waller will travel to Chicago at two different times to sit in or planning and design meetings, to acquaint herself with Boesche's studio and his way of working. She will then travel to Calgary to observe the installation of a large project he is undertaking there.

A two-year grant of $52,000 was awarded to The Dale Warland Singers, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in support of the New Choral Music Program. The Dale Warland Singers is a nationally recognized professional choral ensemble which has a firm commitment to performance of 20th Century choral music. Now in its eighth year, the New Choral Music Program allows talented and under-recognized composers to take risks in the creation of new choral work and to receive significant opportunities for professional advancement. A national competition results in four awards to composers to write short pieces for a professional reading by the Singers. From that group of four, The Dale Warland Singers selects one for a major commission. Her or his work is then performed by the Singers as part of its annual concert season.

RUTH WAUKASO, an Anishinaabe visual artist, will spend time traveling to Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto and Winnipeg in order to revive, in her own work, significant Anishinaabe art objects and designs by studying major collections in four Canadian museums.

LAURIE WEN received support for Don't Worry, I'm Fine, a 60-minute documentary about her role as a link between two of her closest blood relatives-one living, one dead-about whom she knows almost nothing. Themes of alienation and secrecy, both cultural and personal, are explored through the search for who these women are. Wen will move from the personal to a wider scale, in which exile, secrecy and silence reflect the mentality of many whose cultural heritage is haunted by the Cultural Revolution and the Tiananmen Massacre. Cinema vrit footage of her grandmother's life in Hong Kong today will be juxtaposed with footage of Wen's search for her Aunt Maisy's past.

John Whitehead, St. Paul, MN, $6,000. To produce "Down in the Valley", a 50-minute per-sonal video documentary about the evolution of a small middle-American city, using as a center-piece the recent gang-related murder/suicide of four teenagers in his home-town of Appleton, WI.

A grant was awarded to writer MONICA WOELFEL to spend time in the San Francisco Bay Area and in London, England, to conduct research for a memoir, Growing Up in Black & White, the story of two inter- racial sisters. Woelfel will conduct interviews with her sister and research the historical period and place in which they grew to adulthood. The book represents an important continuation of Woelfels work recording the stories women tell

The collaborative team of MARK WOJAHN and MATTHEW BAKKOM received subsidy to spend 14 days traveling to Mississippi River towns from Minnesota to Louisiana, visiting public libraries to show their new documentary film and lead discussions of the issues which surround it. Wojahn and Bakkom in late 1984 traveled along the Mississippi River to document the feelings and thoughts of its diverse inhabitants. They concentrated on issues of civic conduct, the current state of our communities, our collective past and our possible futures.

Since 1988, the Jerome Foundation has awarded support to the WOMENS ART REGISTRY OF MINNESOTA (WARM), St. Paul, Minnesota, for the Mentor Program. A two-year commitment of $27,000 in continued support of that initiative was authorized. The Mentor Program serves two types of participants: mentorsprofessional artists and members of WARM, usually well established in the State of Minnesota; and protgesserious developing artists no longer in school and in the early stages of career development. The program focuses on the emerging artist not only as an independent, creative individual, but as a member of a community in which the creation of art, the discussion of ideas, critical analysis and ongoing interconnection take place.

A grant of $8,000 was authorized for X-ART FOUNDATION, New York City, in support of the publication Blast5. The X-Art Foundation was founded in 1990 to create, encourage and present new forms of text and art. It fosters the collaboration of emerging artists working in diverse media, and enhances the publics knowledge and appreciation of contemporary art through publications, exhibitions, symposia, discussion forums and various on-line activities. Jerome funding will support emerging artists whose works are featured in Blast.

Judith Yourman, Minneapolis, MN, $5,000. For the production of "Refugee Memories", a video installation work which will explore her family's flight from Warsaw at the outbreak of WW II and their subsequent struggle for assimilation in the US, through the use of interviews, archival footage and home movies.

The ensemble ZEITGEIST was founded to present the best of contemporary music reflecting the spirit of the 20th Century. Its commitment to performing the music of live composers drew the Jerome Foundations attention and a two-year commitment of $23,450 for the commissioning and presentation of three works by emerging composers. Those artists are Mark Applebaum, Barbara Benary and Mixashawn. These commissions will enable Zeitgeist to enliven todays music and enlarge its public.