Past
Grantees

WIRTH-DAVIS, SPENCER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to Kielder Forest, England, home to the Kielder Observatory, and some of the darkest night skies on Earth. Wirth-Davis is exploring the relationship between natural, dark night skies and the potential effects of extremely rural, natural settings on his genres of music born of urban environments and technology as inspiration for new work.

SPRINGBOARD FOR THE ARTS, St. Paul, Minnesota, as fiscal sponsor for WORKHAUS PLAYWRIGHTS COLLECTIVE, received $15,000 in support of the creation, development and production of new works by emerging playwrights Trista Baldwin and Alan Berks in its 2015-16 season.  They Want by Alan Berks, a modernization of Aeschylus’ Oresteia, is set in modern times in the home of the Secretary of Defense, amidst a war in Asia many miles away. al-Khatun: Queen of Iraq by Trista Baldwin centers on the extraordinary life of Gertrude Bell, a Victorian-era explorer, archaeologist, writer, and politician, fluent in Arabic and Farsi, and the impact she had on Iraq and the entire Middle East. Workhaus is a collective of Twin Cities playwrights who create a direct relationship with audiences by fully producing original plays under the artistic leadership of the playwright. Since its founding in 2006, it has produced 22 world premieres. Springboard for the Arts is an economic and community development organization for artists and by artists. Its work is about building stronger communities, neighborhoods, and economies.

WONG, KIT YI, New York, New York, will participate in the Arctic Circle Expeditionary Residency Program that sails the archipelago of Svalbard. Wong will explore and create new work in collaboration with scientists and artists aboard. She wants to use the disorientation induced by the stark Arctic environs and interpret that physical experience and the unique aura of the immense white spaces through video, field recordings, photography, live performance, and writing. She expects that being immersed in an extreme environment will push the boundaries of her current artistic practice and provide her with a novel perspective on innovation.

CHRISTOPHER MAKOTO YOGI received support for a 120-minute narrative called I Was a Simple Man. Part ghost story, part historical memory, I Was Simple Man looks at the life of one man and fractures it into four stories. The film employs a non-traditional film structure to create a unique cinematic experience of a locale many think they know, but actually know very little about: Hawai‘i. Through its four sections, the film covers a wide swath of Hawaiian history: from the verdant sugarcane fields of Pre-WWII O‘ahu to the modern gastropubs of Honolulu, to the coastline countryside, dying and haunted by the supernatural. Masao Matsuyoshi, the central character of the film, has an 85-year-old face that is dark and weathered like damp leather. The creases on his face are deep—valleys detailing decades in the hot Hawai‘i sun. Masao has lived a long life in Hawai‘i Nei, and he is now facing the end of it. He is ready to die. As the regrets of his life weigh down upon him, he must face both the family he’s failed and the ghosts of his past. One by one, Masao’s family members make a pilgrimage to the countryside to care for him in his old plantation home. Through their eyes, we get a full portrait of Masao himself.

ZEITGEIST, St. Paul, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $33,000 in support of the participation of emerging composers from Minnesota and New York City in the Zeitgeist/Composer Workshop, an annual five-day workshop devoted to exploring the artistic work of three emerging composers. Zeitgeist’s mission is to bring newly created music to life with performances that engage and stimulate. A quartet of musicians animated by a spirit of adventure and collaboration, Zeitgeist presents works of substance with passion and integrity, and strives to forge new links between musicians and music lovers through concerts, commissions, collaborations, recordings, and dialogue with audiences. The Zeitgeist/Composer Workshop is designed to give emerging composers the opportunity to develop creative ideas and stretch their artistic boundaries in an environment that celebrates exploration and experimentation.  The focus is not on the completion of a composition but rather on the generation and development of ideas and the exploration of musical possibilities. Each composer brings sketches of materials to develop, using Zeitgeist as a laboratory. The workshop culminates in an informal performance.

ZENON DANCE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $36,705 in support of the development of a new movement work and educational residency at the Camargo Foundation, Cassis, France, as part of the Jerome@Camargo Program. Zenon Dance will develop a new work by choreographer Stefanie Batten Bland in collaboration with a French composer, engage with dance centers in the region, and conduct a one-week residency in the Cassis primary school. Zenon's mission is to sustain an artistically excellent, professional dance company in the Twin Cities by presenting the works of locally, nationally, and internationally recognized modern and Jazz choreographers to the broadest and most diverse audiences and communities possible, including those with disabilities. Zenon accomplishes this through performance, education, and outreach.

SAMEH ZOABI received support for CATCH THE MOON, a feature-length dramatic comedy that tells the story of Halim (25), a young entrepreneur in Gaza who is eager to marry the woman of his dreams, Jasmine (23). Jasmine is by no means an ordinary woman, she is educated and ready to begin a career as a teacher. She is a force in her own right who loves Halim deeply. But the choice to marry Halim is not entirely hers. Her parents have already lost two sons to the conflict with Israel, and are very protective of their only remaining child. They want the best for her, a strong and self-reliant husband, who can also make a good offer. When the time comes to set Jasmine’s dowry, Halim’s father, Issam (55) impulsively promises a new car for his son’s new bride – a Mercedes no less, to be delivered in a couple of weeks. Left to raise his son alone after the death of his wife, Issam’s relationship with Halim lies at the center of the story, and father and son find this relationship tested by the lunacy of trying to find anything, let alone a car, in Gaza during the current Israeli blockade. Halim’s task is a near impossibility. Gaza is sealed from all borders and basic supplies must be smuggled in to meet daily needs. In the end, Halim navigates the many moral and political hazards of life in Gaza and his labor of love leads him into its surreal underbelly—the smugglers’ tunnels connecting Egypt and the Strip. In the terrifying underworld of the tunnels, Halim realizes he is proving himself to his father, his fiancé’s family, and most importantly, to himself.

ADKINS, ROMELLE, Minnesota, will travel to Boston, Massachusetts and Charleston, South Carolina to research personal histories, photographic archives, newspaper articles, and historic sites to inform and complete a draft of her novel. This research will inform the psyche of the characters in her novel about social/racial strife, the hiding of one’s identity, the search for one’s self worth and soul, the loss of family, betrayal and comradeship, the repercussions of slavery and the fight for freedom, and the fabric upon which their story is structured.

The AMERICAN COMPOSERS FORUM, Saint Paul, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $200,000 in support of the Jerome Fund for New Music and the Minnesota Emerging Composer's Award Program. The Forum enriches lives by nurturing the creative spirit of composers and communities. It provides new opportunities for composers and their music to flourish and engages communities in the creation, performance, and enjoyment of new music. The Jerome Fund for New Music (JFund) supports the creation, presentation, and subsequent life of a new work. Approximately ten grants are made each year by an independent selection panel reviewing submissions in response to an open call. Funding is restricted to emerging artists based in New York City and Minnesota. The Minnesota Emerging Composer Award (MECA) is an annual award given to emerging Minnesota composers of Jazz/Improvisation, Electronic, and World Music. Recipients are nominated by a panel of leaders in the Minnesota new music community.

The AMERICAN COMPOSERS ORCHESTRA, New York City, received $18,000 in support of the commissioning of new works from two emerging composers for the 2014-15 Orchestra Underground Concert. The Orchestra is dedicated to the creation, performance, preservation, and promulgation of music by American composers. Founded in 1977, ACO pursues its mission through a range of activities including concerts, commissions, recordings, educational programs, and new music reading sessions. Jerome dollars will allow the Orchestra to commission new works from two emerging composers for its Orchestra Underground series, which challenges conventional notions about symphonic music and embraces multidisciplinary and collaborative work, novel instrumental and spatial orientations of musicians, new technologies, and multimedia.

PRISCILLA ANANY, for Children of the Mountain, a feature-length narrative set in Ghana. Essuman (33), a yam seller and a single parent, gives birth to a child with cleft palate and her first instinct is to run away as she’s accused of causing her child’s “imperfection.” She makes the attempt, but her conscience brings her back and she accepts her fate. Three years later, her son is diagnosed with cerebral palsy which makes him unable to talk, sit or walk like his peers. Determined to find cure for her son, Essuman goes from hospital to hospital until she accepts that the condition is incurable. She gives up on Western medicine and seeks the help of a herbalist, a protestant pastor and a spiritualist. They all either dupe her, take advantage of her or mislead her. The stress of taking care of a disabled child and the criticisms she encounters drives Essuman to drastic measures.

THE ANDERSON CENTER at Tower View, Red Wing, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of  $40,250 in support of residencies for emerging artists from Minnesota and New York City. The Center’s mission is to uphold the unique wealth of the arts in the region; to develop, foster, and promote the creation of works by artists of all kinds; and to provide leadership and services that ensure a strong, healthy arts community and a greater recognition of the value of the arts in society. Jerome supports residencies of emerging artists from New York City and Minnesota. Five to seven artists are selected each year and receive stipends, room and board, studio space, and the opportunity to work in a community of artists on the serene and inspiring campus of the Anderson Center. An open call yields proposals that are reviewed by an independent selection committee.

PANGEA WORLD THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, as fiscal sponsor for ANICCHA ARTS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $10,000 in support of the creation and production of FOLD by Pramila Vasudevan. Pangea World Theater illuminates the human condition, celebrates cultural differences, and promotes human rights by creating and presenting international multidisciplinary theater. Founded in 2004, Aniccha Arts serves as a vehicle for the creation and production of Vasudevan’s performance works. Its mission is to use dance and electronic media to interrupt public space and evoke mass response. FOLD will utilize embodied, material, spatial, and sonic performance explorations to illuminate how the simple act of folding is socially and historically rooted, involving uneven power relations among people, communities, and nation states.

ARS NOVA, New York City, received $20,000 in support of the development and production of two new devised theater projects by emerging artists. Ars Nova develops and produces theater, comedy, and music artists in early stages of their professional careers. Its developmental programs support outside-the-box thinking and encourage innovative, genre-bending work. Its devised theater initiative offers support to generative artists across multiple disciplines to create new performance work, which is then premiered at Ars Nova. KPOP is an immersive theater piece that invites the audience into a multi-level Korean pop music recording studio, and is being collaboratively developed with Ma-Yi Theater and the Woodshed Collective. Bull’s Hollow tells the tale of a whale singing at a frequency lower than all other known whales in the world, unseen and unheard. Deep inside is the town of Bull's Hollow. Its founding, mythology, and future are told in this new work.

 ART IN GENERAL, New York City, received a two-year grant of $40,000 in support of the participation of emerging artists in the New Commissions Program. Art in General assists artists with the production and presentation of new work. It changes in response to the needs of artists and informs and engages the public about their work. Since its launch in 2005, the New Commissions Program has formed the core of Art in General's programming, and was designed in direct response to feedback from artists who expressed a need for more in-depth support for the production of new work. The program provides artists with a high level of organizational and conceptual support, including an honorarium, production fees, exhibition space, a solo exhibition, promotion, and opportunities to engage with audiences through free online and public programs.

The Jerome Foundation entered into a partnership with ART MATTERS, New York City, to support a pilot program offering four one-month residencies to individual grant recipients of Art Matters and the Jerome Foundation at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France. Jerome's financial contribution is $9,450. The mission of Art Matters is to assist artists who make work intending to break ground aesthetically and socially. A call for applications to current and former individual artist grantees will be issued in late January 2015. An independent selection panel will award the residencies. More information on this opportunity will be posted on the websites of the Camargo Foundation, Art Matters, and the Jerome Foundation. This residency initiative is part of the Jerome@Camargo program.

ASIAN AMERICAN WRITERS’ WORKSHOP, New York City, received $24,000 in support of The Margins Fellowship Program for emerging writers of Asian American descent based in New York City. The Asian American Writers’ Workshop is devoted to the creating, publishing, developing, and disseminating of creative writing by Asian Americans. The Margins is an online magazine dedicated to inventing the Asian American creative culture of tomorrow. Jerome support will subsidize the participation of emerging Asian American writers of fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction in The Margins, and also support the authors’ own writing projects. They will receive additional services and opportunities during their fellowships.

BENDECK, GEOFFREY, New York City, will travel to Ecuador to research the life of the late Peace Corps writer Moritz Thomsen. This fabled Peace Corps volunteer spent 30 years of his life, from age 44 to 74, and wrote four memoirs, in the province of Esmeraldas, Ecuador. Bendeck’s research will inform a hybrid memoir/unofficial biography about the jungle, this forgotten Afro-Ecuadorian Province, and the story of a writer and life forgotten. It is about how the life of Moritz paralleled Bendeck’s life as a Peace Corps volunteer in Esmeraldas from 2008 to 2010.

CHRIS BOLAN received support for the feature-length A Secret Love that tells the story of a woman and her partner, Pat Henschel. It is a personal love story of a farm girl from the prairies of Canada, who in her early adult years moved to the heartland of America to play professional baseball. Now in her late 80s, Terry has decided with her partner, Pat, to break a sixty-five year secret by coming out as lesbians to friends and family. Terry was a catcher for the Peoria Redwings in the All American Girls Professional Baseball League. Scouted by Phillip K. Wrigley in 1945, she was drafted for the Redwings in 1946, where she played until the end of that decade. Terry and Pat’s life story is about relationships, commitment and family; today it is also a story about aging, healthcare and acceptance of gays and lesbians in the social fabric of our communities. At a time when same sex marriage legislation is being passed or considered across the country, love stories like this humanize stereotypes, and help viewers understand the risks that people take to live their convictions. As filmmaker Chris Bolan puts it, “These women are the heart of America.”

BOULÉ, MICHELLE, New York City, will travel to Gozo, Malta, to attend a BioGeometry Foundation Training course as part of her research on spatial design, patterns, sacred geometry, and radiasthesia. Boulé will integrate this research into a new work that responds choreographically to many element of this science, such as the relationship between shape and energy and the hidden ways in which nature creates and distributes energy through shape, color, sound, and motion.