Past
Grantees

LaPOINTE, TIANA, Minnesota, will travel to Pine Ridge Nation to research and network with local community members regarding land seizures and displacements of tribal members from their homes along the Stronghold section of the reservation. LaPointe’s interviews and research will inform a documentary project from the Lakota tribal perspective about the government partnership to cede a broad stretch of the Stronghold land for a national park, which would disrupt many families living on the land and would include sacred burial sites.

LARK PLAY DEVELOPMENT CENTER, New York City, received a two-year grant of $44,000 in support of the Jerome New York Fellowship and services for emerging playwrights. The Lark provides transformative support for playwrights. Founded in 1994, this laboratory for new voices and new ideas provides playwrights and their collaborators with resources to develop their work in a supportive yet rigorous environment. The Lark encourages playwrights to define their own goals and creative processes in pursuit of their unique visions. The Jerome New York Fellowship provides substantial artistic and financial support to an emerging writer of extraordinary ability, promise, and vision in an intensive two-year residency that provides resources and guidance to generate and develop a significant body of work.

LEE, GRACE, New York City, will travel to the central coast of California and to Denver, Colorado to conduct archival research in historical family archives/documents, interview family members, and visit key sites to help reconstruct detailed scenes for her memoir. This work is about the embodiment of displacement and dislocation resulting from war, exploring interconnections with intergenerational trauma, memory, and the notions of home and belonging. It tells the story of her family who immigrated to the US in the aftermath of the Korean War, which divided the nation into two bodies. 

THE LOFT LITERARY CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $122,000 in support of the Mentor Series. Founded in 1974, The Loft Literary Center advances the artistic development of writers, fosters a thriving literary community, and inspires a passion for literature. It is one of the nation’s leading literary arts centers. The Loft Mentor Series in Poetry and Creative Prose offers twelve emerging Minnesota writers the opportunity to work intensively with six nationally acclaimed writers of prose and poetry. The emerging writers and mentors give public readings at The Loft.

THE FIELD, New York City, as fiscal sponsor for LONE WOLF TRIBE, Brooklyn, New York, received a two-year grant of $18,000 in support of the development and production of the new work Clarion Call. Founded by artists for artists, The Field provides strategic services to thousands of performing artists and companies in New York City and beyond. It fosters creative exploration, stewards innovative management strategies, and helps artists reach their fullest potential. Lone Wolf Tribe is a puppet theatre ensemble blending history, sociology, and psychology into brutally poetic contemporary narratives. Under the direction of Founding Artistic Director Kevin Augustine, the ensemble will develop Clarion Call, a performance cycle of three self-contained works presented in indoor and outdoor settings, and in various environmental conditions over the duration of three days and nights. This work is a response to the cynicism, frustration, and paralysis many people experience in the face of a changing world. The goal is to broaden the model of how ideas of activism are communicated.

MARIE LOSIER received support for Cassandro, The Exotico!, an intimate experimental documentary portrait of one of the most renowned performers in the astonishing world of Mexican “lucha libre” wrestling. Over a 17 year career, Cassandro, an openly gay, cross-dressing “exotico” wrestler, has thrilled lucha audiences with his fearlessness in and out of the ring, battling fierce opponents, homophobia, addiction, and the after-effects of severe childhood trauma. Cassandro is arguably Mexico’s most daring and highly revered exotico. He is the current NWA World Welterweight Champion and a former UWA World Lightweight Champion. He has been openly gay for most of his 35-year career, breaking boundaries within a community that has not always tolerated homosexuality. Filmmaker Marie Losier was immediately taken by Cassandro’s warmth, eccentricity, and incredible athletic ability when she met him. They struck up a friendship and Losier soon learned that his enormous spirit rises out of a life marred by violence, poverty, and addiction. Over the next two years, Losier visited Cassandro seven times in Mexico City and El Paso as well as Paris and London while he was touring. He introduced her to the astonishing, complex and highly secretive inner world of lucha libre. This documentary is about Cassandro’s life within that world and so much more.

THE LOWER EAST SIDE PRINTSHOP, New York City, received a two-year grant of $30,000 in support of Keyholder Residencies. This nonprofit printmaking studio supports contemporary artists in the creation of new work. The Keyholder Residency Program offers emerging artists free 24-hour access to printmaking facilities to develop new work and foster artistic careers. The residencies are one year in length, and enable Keyholder artists to work independently, in a productive environment alongside other artists. Applications are evaluated by a rotating committee of artists, critics, curators, and arts professionals. Stipends are offered, as well as a variety of services and educational subsidies.

THE LOWER MANHATTAN CULTURAL COUNCIL, New York City, received a two-year grant of  $56,000 in support of the participation of emerging New York City-based artists in the 2014-15 and 2015-16 Workspace Program. The mission of the Council is to empower artists by providing them with networks, resources, and support to create vibrant, sustainable communities in Lower Manhattan and beyond. Workspace is a nine-month studio residency program that focuses on creative practice development for emerging artists working across all disciplines. The program offers space for experimentation and dialogue with peers and arts professionals, as well as career-advancement opportunities. It serves between 25 and 30 individuals or collaborative groups annually. Artists are chosen via an open call and peer review process. Workspace encourages creative risk-taking, collaboration, learning, and skill sharing at a critical early stage of an artist’s career.

MA-YI THEATER COMPANY, New York City, received a two-year grant of $36,000 in support of the creation, development, and production of new works by emerging playwrights in the Writers Lab. Ma-Yi Theater Company develops and produces new and innovative plays by Asian American writers. It is one of the country’s leading incubators of new work, shaping the national discourse of what it means to be Asian American today. Founded in 2004, the Writers Lab is a resident company of Asian American playwrights, a professional peer-based workshop in permanent residence at Ma-Yi Theater. The Lab is designed to nurture and showcase Asian American playwrights. It is a community resource, brain trust, and place of artistic growth for its members. In many cases, the Lab is the place where writers share first drafts of new plays, and where they continue to refine the work until it is ready for production.

MADAUS, THERESA, KING, TARA, THOMAS, MONICA (MAD KING THOMAS), Minnesota, will attend master improviser Julyen Hamilton's workshop in Brussels, Belgium or Banyoles, Spain. The study with Hamilton will further the collaborative’s process around creating dance in a theatrical context—performance moments cultivated through rigorous intellectual investigations, manifested in an atmosphere of transformation, insight, and understanding without conclusions.

THE FIELD, New York City, as fiscal sponsor for CHRISTINA MASCIOTTI, Astoria, Queens, received $10,000 in support of the production of SOCIAL SECURITY. Founded by artists for artists, The Field provides strategic services to thousands of performing artists and companies in New York City and beyond. It fosters creative exploration, stewards innovative management strategies, and helps artists reach their fullest potential. Masciotti’s plays feature contemporary American characters who are on the fringes of society as immigrants, working class anti-heroes, or disaffected youth. In different ways, these characters are struggling to be recognized as human beings. She hopes to bring the full spectrum of their lives to the stage and allow their stories to serve as a portal from which the audience can examine their own lives. SOCIAL SECURITY is an experimental theater work that follows a trio of neighbors in downtown Reading, Pennsylvania, who look to each other for support as the familiar and financial security nets they’ve individually set up start to fray. The work reflects an interest in the social effects of class distinctions, and how the manifold dangers of living alone can be mitigated by one’s education level, ethnic background, income, and age.

THE FIELD, New York City, as fiscal sponsor for JULIANA F. MAY/MAYDANCE Long Island City, New York, received $10,000 in support of the development and production of The Installment. Founded by artists for artists, The Field provides strategic services to thousands of performing artists and companies in New York City and beyond. It fosters creative exploration, stewards innovative management strategies, and helps artists reach their fullest potential. Juliana F. May’s The Installment uses abstraction, repetition, and simultaneity as critical strategies for interrogating narrative and contemporary dance. The audience will be divided between two performance environments. Repetitive movement sequences, dialogue, text, and a simultaneous compositional structure characterize the action. The dancers will perform iconic gestures that situate themselves inside the rhythms and shapes of a 1950s and 1960s musical theater aesthetic combined with May’s sinuous movement vocabulary. The confluence of body, object, language, and persona create jagged terrain. Narrative threads are ruptured by the shifting sensorial experience.

JUAN MEJIA received support for The Battle for Land, a feature-length hybrid documentary/animation film born out of a commitment by the filmmaker to grapple with the realities of a country stained by inequality and injustice. Through detailed portraits of characters in the film, The Battle for Land journeys deep into the heart of mass displacement in Colombia, where development models and corporate interests collide with and ravage local visions and ancestral traditions, and the dark side of progress is revealed. The film depicts the catastrophic complexities of forced mass displacement. Colombia surpasses the world in its internal refugee crisis with close to 5 million people violently displaced from their land since 1990. Black Colombians, approximately 17% of the population, make up a disproportionate 30% of those uprooted from their territory. As the civil war in Colombia escalates, armed actors are disputing the territory and seeking control of the valuable natural resources of the Pacific region, where the majority of the Afro-Colombian population resides. Leading activists affirm that if displacement rates continue, Afro-Colombians could disappear as a distinguishable, cohesive ethnic group from the Pacific Coast. This film examines that growing crisis.

THE MINNEAPOLIS COLLEGE OF ART AND DESIGN, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $210,000 in support of the MCAD/Jerome Foundation Fellowships for Emerging Artists. For more than a century, the Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) has been a catalyst for creativity, serving more than 700 degree-seeking students plus an additional 5,000 in its youth and adult classes and public programs each year. Its mission is to educate individuals to be professional artists and designers, pioneering thinkers, creative leaders, and engaged global citizens. The purpose of the MCAD/Jerome Foundation Fellowships for Emerging Artists program is to advance, artistically and critically, the work of emerging visual artists in Minnesota. It provides fellowships of $12,000 each to five fellows each year, allowing them the freedom to pursue their own work. Funds may be used to secure time to formulate ideas, experiment with new techniques and materials, work or study with mentors, purchase equipment, rent a studio, and make art. Three visiting critics or curators meet individually with the artists in studio visits. A culminating exhibition caps the year in MCAD’s gallery, accompanied by catalogue.

THE MINNEAPOLIS INSTITUTE OF ARTS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $48,000 in support of the participation of emerging artists in the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program. The Institute's mission is to enrich the community by collecting, preserving, and making accessible outstanding works of art from the world's diverse cultures. The Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program (MAEP) is a curatorial program dedicated to exhibiting and supporting artists living and working in the state of Minnesota. An elected artist panel representing the Minnesota artist community selects fellow artists to exhibit their work at the Institute. By presenting contemporary art within the context of an encyclopedic art museum, the MAEP actively inserts the state's artists into a broader discourse about history, art, and culture. This forum for contemporary art and ideas has presented more than 180 exhibitions over the past 35 years.

MINNESOTA CENTER FOR BOOK ARTS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $48,000 in support of the Book Arts Fellowship/Mentorship Program. The Center celebrates the book as a vibrant contemporary art form that takes many shapes. Its mission is to lead the advancement of the book as an evolving art form. The Book Arts Fellowship Program helps artists push the boundaries of contemporary book arts by supporting the creation of new work. The program is open to artists of all disciplines interested in exploring the book form. An independent panel reviews open call submissions. An exhibition caps the fellowship year. The Book Arts Mentorship Program is an artist development program that introduces the book arts to emerging artists whose primary medium is in another discipline. Recipients embark on a year-long study of new artistic disciplines and one-on-one work with master artist mentors to develop their individual projects. The mentorship program also culminates in an exhibition in the Center’s gallery.

THE METROPOLITAN REGIONAL ARTS COUNCIL, St. Paul, Minnesota, received $7,500 to support the production of the Minnesota State of the Arts report. The Council increases access to the arts in the seven-county metropolitan area communities by providing information, organizational support, and grants. The Council is acting as fiscal sponsor for a statewide effort to produce a Minnesota State of the Arts report in 2015, utilizing data collected through the Cultural Data Project in Minnesota, and adding to that an economic impact study conducted with Americans for the Arts and other data sources, and interpretive services to produce a comprehensive document.

the minnesota council on foundations, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $5,850 in general support of the Council’s 2014 activities as well as the Jerome Foundation’s membership in the Council. The Council expands and strengthens a vibrant community of diverse grantmakers who individually and collectively advance the common good. Its members represent three-quarters of all grantmaking in the state, awarding more than $1 billion each year. The Council is an advocate for giving, a resource for grantmaking, and a catalyst for philanthropy.

The COWLES CENTER FOR DANCE AND THE PERFORMING ARTS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $40,000 in support of the participation of emerging Minnesota choreographers in the 2015 Momentum: New Dance Works Festival. The Center is a catalyst for the creation, performance, education, and celebration of dance and the performing arts. Momentum: New Dance Works, launched in 2001, commissions and presents new works by promising and innovative Minnesota dance-makers. It illuminates the skill and passion of the next generation’s most promising choreographers. Momentum has enabled the creation and presentation of new works by artistically and culturally diverse emerging artists who have continued to make significant contributions to the local and national arts scene.

MELISSA MONTERO and HUGO PEREZ, for the feature-length documentary Isabel Rosado: Nacionalista. At the age of 106, Isabel Rosado is an unapologetic radical nationalist who has sought independence for Puerto Rico from the U.S. since the 1930s. Twenty years before the militant radicalism of the Black Panthers, the American Indian Movement, and the Young Lords in the United States, Isabel took up arms against the United States in 1954 in a pitched gun battle with the FBI in Old San Juan. Over the decades that followed, Isabel has not been deterred by arrests, imprisonment, and police brutality. She has remained active in succeeding generations of political activism. Today popular sentiment in Puerto Rico seems to have turned against self-sovereignty, but Isabel remains committed to the ideal that has driven her for eight decades - freedom for her country. ISABEL is an hour-long portrait of a woman whose life encompasses the history of Puerto Rico over the last century, and whose struggles reflect the politics that have divided Puerto Ricans during that time and continue to divide them today.