Past
Grantees

CARRIE HAWKS, for black enuf*, an animated documemoir of central character, Hawks, that takes a playful approach to heavier questions of racial identity, difference, and self-acceptance. Hawks is looking to open up the idea of blackness and find where she and her family belong.  “I’m not a Negro Hair Petting Zoo, though I often get mistaken for one,” muses Hawks. “Just add curious folks with misplaced manners and watch the probing begin!” She gets weak in the knees for accordion music and not fried chicken.  She has been called the whitest black person around more times than she’d care to mention. Having been called the “token black girl” and “the black girl who talks proper,” Hawks embarks on a journey to find her place in the world. How can she stay true to her identity and be accepted by her race?

IN THE HEART OF THE BEAST PUPPET AND MASK THEATRE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $24,000 in support of PuppetLab. In the Heart of the Beast uses water, flour, newspaper, paint, and unlimited imagination to tell stories that explore the struggles and celebrations of human existence through puppet and mask performance. It produces an annual season of original plays and touring productions, creates pageants, and teaches puppetry and pageantry through residencies and workshops for youth, students, teachers, and communities. Puppetlab engages four emerging creators in a seven-month intensive puppet and mask development process culminating in work-in-progress performances. Open to emerging artists based in Minnesota, the program provides a stipend to the artist, a production budget, a mentor director, professional development workshops, technical production, marketing, and documentation.

HEMMINGS, MARGUERITE, New York City, will travel to Toubab Dialaw, Senegal to research the intersection of traditional and contemporary African dance forms and contemporary urban dance styles. Hemmings plans to study at Ecole des Sables to develop greater context and vocabulary for her upcoming creative work and artistic collaborations, which she describes as experimental dancehall. 

The HENRY STREET SETTLEMENT, and its ABRONS ART CENTER, New York City, received $18,000 in support of a commissioning program for emerging choreographers. The Abrons Arts Center is the performing and visual arts program of Henry Street Settlement. It supports the presentation of the innovative, multi-disciplinary work; cultivates artists in all stages of their creative development through educational programs, commissions, and residencies; and serves as an intersection of cultural engagement for local, national, and international audiences and arts-workers. Three emerging choreographers will receive commissioning support, free rehearsal workspace, a work-in-progress showing, and a full production of their work upon completion.

HERE, New York City, received $22,000 in support of the participation of emerging artists in the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP). HERE builds a community that nurtures career artists as they create innovative hybrid live performance in theatre, dance, music, puppetry, media, and visual art. The Artist Residency Program supports the singular vision of the lead artist through commissions, long-term development, and production support. In HARP, HERE commissions and develops new hybrid works over a one to three year period. The resident artists show works-in-progress, develop workshop productions, and mount full-scale productions. HARP also provides professional development training in such areas as audience relations, budgeting, grant writing, and touring.

HICKS, JENNIFER BOWEN, Minnesota, will travel to the Bastøy Island Prison in Norway; to Angola in Louisiana; and to Pine Bluff in Arkansas to inform a book-length text that explores innovative philosophies behind incarceration through personal essay, lyric memoir, primary documents, and dramatic dialogue collected from interviews with inmates, historians, and prison officials. Hicks has been teaching in prisons since 2011, and founded the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. The locations of her trip will bring her to prisons in which she will explore the mechanics of progressive prison initiatives, and the philosophies and outcomes of their approaches. She would like to explore, through interviews and observations, some of the deeply complex issues surrounding punishment and rehabilitation.

ANDERS HOLINE, Saint Paul, received support for a&n, a feature-length documentary that observes the inspiring and uncommon journey of Aaron and Nora Purmort, a young married couple embracing life in unique ways as Aaron battles brain cancer. Aaron and Nora’s journey started when Nora received a call from Aaron’s place of work on Halloween. “Aaron has had a seizure,” said one of his co-workers. Nora called out the prank and asked to talk to Aaron. Except it wasn’t a joke. That night they found out that 32-year-old Aaron had a brain tumor. Surgery would shortly follow, along with the diagnosis of Grade 4 Glioblastoma: Brain Cancer. Sharing a hospital bed that Halloween night, they decided to get married, and two weeks later at the local art gallery where they first met, they took their vows. Two and a half years passed, multiple chemo and radiation rounds have taken place, and against amazing odds they had a baby boy. Nora has shared their story through a blog she started soon after the events on Halloween. It’s quickly evident as one reads the blog that this isn’t your average cancer story. With raw transparency, Nora talks about what it’s like to be staring death down while also embracing life. Their unique story and Nora’s writings have resonated with local audiences through articles and news stories, as well as global audiences through a New York Times article and a segment on the Today Show. Much of their story has taken place online through social media. Nora, a social media director/writer, and Aaron, a web designer, have connected with thousands of people, both inspiring and getting support from people around the world. This film is about their remarkable journey. (Update: Aaron Purmont died on November 25, 2014.)

SAM HOOLIHAN, Minneapolis, received support for City of Lakes, an experimental short that will be a silent visual meditation and poetic portrait of the City of Minneapolis. The film will be 24 minutes in length and shot on 16mm black-and-white film. It will be largely non-narrative and feature carefully composed shots that move within a four-part seasonal cycle. As modern media and contemporary culture continue to accelerate and overload our senses, the film’s slower pace will be a reprieve and offer a moment to step outside conventional time. Hoolihan’s choice of black-and-white film stock will further create a meditative space for the viewer to have a visual experience not fraught with oversaturated information. The film’s content will largely focus on the diversity of the city’s citizens, the transportation system, architecture, green spaces, and city textures. The city’s relationship with water, the abundant lakes, and the indisputable Mississippi River that cuts through the heart of it all will be recurring themes in the film. Hoolihan’s eyes will gravitate to the underappreciated corners of the city, the well built remnants of decades past, the rapid changes to aging infrastructure, and the hidden spots of natural solace within the city limits. City of Lakes will capture aspects of Minneapolis outside most citizens’ day-to-day rhythms, and reveal new paths for viewers to explore.

IACONANGELO, DAVID, New York City, will travel to Mexico City to interview Dreamers (young undocumented immigrants brought to the US by parents as children) who were then deported to Mexico City. Large support and reintegration networks for young deportees, based in Mexico City, will facilitate contacts. He hopes to gain an understanding of how Dreamers view their pasts, and what motivated their choices for who they will become in the future, to inform his first novel.

LAURA ISRAEL received support for the feature-length documentary Don’t Blink - Robert Frank. Robert Frank revolutionized photography and helped put independent film on the map. He documented the Beats, Welsh coal miners, Peruvian Indians, The Stones, London bankers, and the Americans. The journey has been a bumpy ride, and is now revealed with unblinking honesty by the reclusive artist himself. Frank’s multi-layered life and work are largely inseparable, and despite continual interest from biographers, he has been reluctant to open the door to his past – until now. He has finally made an exception for Don’t Blink - Robert Frank because of his ongoing professional relationship with director Laura Israel, his longtime film and video editor. Their years of collaboration have resulted in a working relationship built on intuition and mutual trust. Granted unprecedented access to both Frank and his archives, Israel’s film will offer audiences revelatory insight into the intricacies of Frank’s photos, films, influence and personal history.

KARL JACOB, Hibbing, received support for Cold November, a hybrid narrative feature-length film that will be the second in a trilogy shot in the same location in northern Minnesota as Pollywogs, the first film in the trilogy. The film follows Florence, a 12-year-old girl being raised within a matriarchal family that puts a lot of weight on the pragmatic and traditional ritual of a child's first deer hunt. Through the guidance of her mother, grandmother, aunts and uncle, Florence discovers and accepts the path she must take while simultaneously living through the aftermath of a recent family trauma. In revealing the timeless mythology embodied by this modern American rite of passage, and in the hunting and mourning experiences of a girl who is becoming a woman, filmmaker Jacob hopes to spark thought about how facing mortality is a fundamental and confrontational part of what it means to be human.

THE JAZZ GALLERY, New York City, received $25,000 in support of the 2014-15 residency and commissioning program for emerging composers. The Jazz Gallery nurtures the youngest generation of professional jazz musicians by giving them an audience for their performances and a stage upon which to assemble their bands. The Jazz Gallery residency commissions offer emerging composers financial support, and a space in which to develop, rehearse, and workshop the new compositions before they are publicly presented. Each residency is tailored to meet the needs of the composer.

THE JAZZ GALLERY, New York City, received $25,000 in support of a residency and commissioning program for three emerging composers. The Gallery nurtures the youngest generation of professional jazz musicians by giving them an audience for their performances and a stage upon which to assemble their bands. The Residency Commissions offer artists a commissioning and residency fee that allows them to take a hiatus from the road as they create new works. The Gallery provides space in which to develop, rehearse, and workshop the new music before it is made public. The residency periods are four to six weeks and allow each composer the freedom to create a residency that meets his/her individual needs.

MOLLY KATAGIRI, Minneapolis, received support for Waabooz, a narrative short about how a young Native American artist named Rabbit overcomes his fears through Waabooz, a superhero of his own design brought to life with the help of his grandfather. Twelve year-old Rabbit spends most of his days collecting comics, keeping his little sister out of his hair, and avoiding the teasing of his peers for being an outcast. It's not easy being different on a remote Wisconsin reservation. He keeps busy drawing and has perfected Waabooz, a superhero that embodies Rabbit's desired self. Rabbit dreads dancing in an upcoming powwow; he's awkward and shy and would rather be left out of this community event. When his bedridden grandfather learns of his fears, he decides to help Rabbit become his own hero and find strength within himself. Waabooz is a character driven drama about a boy and his common-place adolescent struggles. The film is set on a reservation that is both breathtaking and stark in landscape. The story is conveyed with the grit of realism, and a magical realism born from Rabbit's artistic imagination. Rabbit's character progression is brought to fruition by his Granfather's imparting of tradition and the spiritual strength that comes with it.

KAZA, MADHU, New York City, will travel to Chamonix-Mont-Blanc, France and its nearby Bossons Glacier, the site of two fatal Air India accidents in 1950 and 1966. While there, she will do research, independent study, and reflection to inform the creation of a new piece of creative nonfiction titled Catalogue of Ships. The work will be a hybrid of memoir, travelogue, fiction, natural history, and nature writing. She will visit institutions with archival information related to the disasters and will also hike the mountain to directly experience the landscape. Her ultimate goal is to write a meditation on cultural memory, the relationship between landscape and disaster, and the unlikely links between people and places.

KELLY, RAJA FEATHER, New York City, will travel to Lyon and Paris, France, to work collaboratively with performer/choreographer Laureling Richard. Using Virginia Woolf's Moments of Being as a creative impetus for conversation, Kelly and Richard will delve into performance as a philosophy, investigating fundamental questions about reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, and language as a foundation for Kelly’s new movement-based work. 

HENRY STREET SETTLEMENT AND ITS ABRONS ART CENTER, New York City, as fiscal sponsor for SIBYL KEMPSON, New York City, received $10,000 in support of her new work LET US NOW PRAISE SUSAN SONTAG. The Abrons Arts Center presents innovative, multidisciplinary work; cultivates artists in all stages of their creative development through educational programs, commissions, and residencies; and serves as an intersection of cultural engagement for local, national, and international audiences and arts-workers. Sibyl Kempson’s LET US NOW PRAISE SUSAN SONTAG is a two-act musical created in conjunction with composer Ashley Turba. The work interrogates how journalistic practices, which border on the artistic, are articulated to the wider public and override an ethical response/motive to action.

THE KITCHEN, New York City, received $26,000 to support emerging artists’ commissions for new works presented in the 2015 season. The Kitchen shows innovative work by emerging and established artists across disciplines. Its programs range from dance, music, performance, and theater to video, film, and art, in addition to literary events, artists’ talks, and lecture series. The Kitchen provides commissions to artists to develop new works. With Jerome’s support, commissions ranging from $1,000 to $6,000 will be given to emerging artists presenting new works in 2015. Emerging artists are selected by the curatorial staff and guest curators.

KONG, MANSEE, New York City, will travel to Hong Kong, China (with a day-trip to Guangzhou, China) to develop and conduct primary research for a potential film highlighting local political artists whose work reflects the growing socio-political tensions and conditions between Hong Kong and mainland China under the “one country, two systems” governing policy.  Local independent and political artists have become more visible in recent years. Kong plans to investigate Hong Kong’s delicate relationship with democracy through the eyes of its artists.

NEW YORK LIVE ARTS, New York City, as fiscal sponsor for choreographer Joanna Kotze, received $10,000 in support of the creation and production of a new work, Find Yourself Here. New York Live Arts is an internationally recognized destination for innovative movement-based artistry offering audiences access to art and artists notable for their conceptual rigor, formal experimentation, and active engagement with the social, political, and cultural currents of our time. Find Yourself Here is an evening-length dance work integrating material from three trios. Each is a collaboration among three dancers and a visual artist, focusing on the interplay between form and chaos, where bodies encounter objects and one another in a kinetic rendering of shared artistic practices. Kotze intends to present a beautiful spectrum of tension and harmony, isolation and togetherness.