Past
Grantees

VANG, MONG, Minnesota, will travel to Khek Noi Village, Thailand, the “Hmong Hollywood” of the world, to study the complex art of Hmong filmmaking, to build relationships for future collaboration, and to investigate the history of Hmong filmmaking and its dependence on the US market. Vang also wants to do research into the business aspects of film as well as the use of visual media as oral history to further develop his skills as a Hmong filmmaker. 

VOCALESSENCE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $30,000 in support of the Essentially Choral Program. The mission of VocalEssence is to champion choral music of all genres, celebrating the vocal experience through innovative concerts, commissions, and community engagement programs. Essentially Choral focuses on the creation, development, and presentation of new choral works by emerging composers. The program connects four established Minnesota composers with four emerging Minnesota composers over a six-month period, providing professional development and vocal composition mentoring as the emerging composers write choral works to be premiered by the VocalEssence Ensemble Singers at the American Choral Directors Association-Minnesota State Conference. The program aims to engage emerging composers and songwriters of all genres. 

VSA MINNESOTA, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $42,000 in support of the Emerging Artists Grant Program for artists with disabilities. Project grants are awarded annually. The mission of VSA Minnesota is to create a community where people with disabilities can learn through, participate in, and access the arts. With the purpose of encouraging new artistic work by artists with disabilities, the Emerging Artists Grant Program has been in operation for 18 years. An open call followed by a jurying process result in the selection of artists to receive support for self-designed projects. A culminating exhibition presents the work of artists operating in written, visual, and performing arts fields. 

MISSY WHITEMAN, Garrison, received support for The Coyote Way: Going Back Home, a narrative short in which reality and ancient lore merge into a vivid and surreal odyssey for Charlie, a boy who is faced with a choice, which will lead him on a time traveling quest to reclaim his birthright as Coyote the Trickster. Coyote represents the deepest darkness that lives within. He is the spirit that rides on the wilds of our dreams, unfurled by the wind. He is the laughter and the joy of new life. Ancient Native American stories telling of Coyote's escapades have been passed down from generation to generation by elders and story tellers, with each telling giving him a renewed life in the imagination of children. In this story, which is the second installment of a three-part Coyote trilogy, Charlie is confronted with a series of incidents and moral dilemmas in his life that are influenced by Coyote the Trickster, and from which he can emerge a better human being or a person in moral and spiritual decline.

LEWIS WILCOX, JAMES CHRISTENSON, ELIOT POPKO, and JONAH SARGENT, Saint Paul, received support for NODAK, a feature-length documentary about the transformation of North Dakota from a desolate flyover state into one of the world’s largest oilfields. The film also explores the desperation and greed beneath the surface of oil fracking, exposing the human costs and risky business model threatening to spread throughout the country. CBS news anchor Eric Sevareid referred to North Dakota as “A rectangular blank spot on the nation’s consciousness.” National Geographic dubbed it “The Emptied Prairie.” The New York Times declared it “Not Far From Forsaken.” Whatever the headline, the state faced depopulation and desertion throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Faithful community boosters like two of the film’s primary characters, economic developer Tom Rolfstad and newspaper publisher Cecile Krimm, attempted for years to attract new citizens without success. In 2006, the situation changed almost overnight. With advances in the controversial new drilling method known as fracking, oil companies unlocked an exponential expansion of the Bakken Oil Fields, setting in motion one of the largest resource extraction rushes in human history and placing North Dakota at the center of economic and population growth in the United States.  As money pours out of the Bakken – and other states and countries debate whether or not they should import North Dakota-style fracking into their lands – NODAK takes its viewers on an intimate journey alongside newcomers investing their future in the region and civic leaders like Rolfstad and Krimm struggling to manage the frenzy. Their stories unfold and intertwine over the course of two years of filming, revealing pie-eyed ambition, overnight fortunes, shocking corruption, and dreams deferred. Viewers will be challenged to separate myth from reality to question whether the Bakken shale boom is an economic miracle or a dangerous financial and social gamble, and whether North Dakota is America’s new high water mark or its canary in the coalmine.

WILLIAMS, ROSEMARY, Minnesota, will travel to Austin, Texas and Palo Alto, California to do research at the R. Buckminster Fuller Collection at Stanford University and investigate the Athelstan Spillhaus Papers at the University of Texas Austin for a film project titled The Invention of Tomorrow, about the unrealized utopian Minnesota Experimental City Project of the 1970s. Her film explores the tension between the utopian futurism of mid-20th century American intellectuals and the challenges of modern urban American society, which has become numb to the remarkable rise of capitalism, consumerism, and constant invention. This research will help with the development of a science fiction narrative that imagines that this incredible project actually happened. 

THE PLAYWRIGHTS’ CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, as fiscal sponsor for WORKHAUS PLAYWRIGHTS COLLECTIVE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $15,000 in support of the productions of new works by playwrights Joe Waechter and Stanton Woods. The Playwrights’ Center champions playwrights and new plays to build upon a living theater that demands new and innovative work. Workhaus Collective creates a direct and immediate relationship between playwright and audience by fully producing original plays under the artistic leadership of the playwright. Since its founding in 2006, it has produced 17 world premiere productions. Waechter’s work Lake Untersee, to be produced in 2014, addresses the challenges of fractured families and artistic blocks. It is through language that the protagonist and his family learn to break free, connect, and find love. Woods is developing Skin Deep Sea, a fairytale that explores the distinctively American inclination for transformation and reinvention through the medium of fantasy, specifically the Victorian futurism of steampunk.

SUSAN YOUSSEF received support for Marjoun and the Flying Headscarf, a feature-length narrative film. With her father imprisoned on terrorist-related charges, an Arab-American teenager in Arkansas searches for identity in the headscarf and a motorcycle. The rider is Marjoun: seventeen, small in stature, large dark eyes. She is dressed in all black from her shoes to her headscarf. The headscarf is held together with metal safety pins, lining the right side of her head, towards the nape of her neck. The scarf flaps in the wind as she rides into a James Dean inspired quest for her identity. In Marjoun and the Flying Headscarf, she is left cleaning up the mess in the household after her father Aabid’s life as a convenience store owner transforms into the life of a prisoner. As her choices get more limited, and as the world around her identifies her as a Muslim, she comes to explore her relationship with God, and specifically her relationship with Islam through the hijab. In this film, Marjoun is featured as a ‘liberated’ muhajiba who takes her life into her own hands. The filmmaker hopes this unorthodox approach to telling the story of a young Arab-American teenager will help change how non-Muslims perceive the often misunderstood hijab.

ZENON DANCE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $56,000 in support of the commissioning and performance of new dance works by emerging choreographers based in New York City and/or Minnesota. Zenon's mission is to sustain an artistically excellent, professional dance company by presenting the commissioned works of emerging and locally, nationally, and internationally recognized modern and jazz choreographers to the broadest and most diverse audiences and communities possible. Zenon will commission, rehearse, and perform new works by six emerging choreographers. Zenon chooses to work with emerging choreographers because they bring excitement and risk to the company's repertory.

THE FIELD, New York City, as fiscal sponsor for choreographer LUCIANA ACHUGAR, Brooklyn, New York, received $10,000 in support of the development and production of Otro Teatro.  Founded by artists for artists, The Field is dedicated to providing strategic services to 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.  achugar’s work exposes the viewer to the unavoidability of the body and consequently arrives at dancing as a necessary and unquestionable act, as catharsis and/or celebration.  Her work pays homage to the classical forms of dance and theater that continue to be relevant, yet questions a civilized standard of beauty and order that puts the body under the tyranny of the intellect.  Otro Teatro examines the role of dance as a form within the context of theater, proposing another kind of theater, a theater of the other, giving voice to the arcane spirit, instincts, and desires of bodies. 

The AMERICAN COMPOSERS FORUM, St. Paul, Minnesota, received $100,000 in support of the Jerome Fund for New Music (JFund) and the Minnesota Emerging Composers Award (MECA) 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 Forum supports composers’ artistic and professional growth through a rich variety of programs and services, including commissions, performances, readings, and fellowships.  The JFund supports the creation of new musical works by emerging composers, composer/performers, improvisers, and sound artists from Minnesota and New York City.  It welcomes applications in all musical genres, and provides enhancement funds to help projects reach their maximum potential.  The Minnesota Emerging Composers Award is given to emerging Minnesota composers of jazz/improvisation, electronic, and world music.  

MITCHELL ARENS received $17,500 for Muzhik, a feature-length Super 16-mm documentary about Sergei Anatolievich Leonov, a recovering alcoholic living in rural Siberia, who fights to maintain the wellbeing of his family in the face of nearly immeasurable odds.  Sergei lives in Ust-Barguzin, a small town on the eastern coast of Lake Baikal in the Russian province of Buryatia. He lives with his wife, mother, sister, nephew, and brother-in-law, all of whom, with the exception of his mother and nephew, are self-abusive alcoholics. They share a single room home and are supported solely by Sergei and his work as a logger.  In Russia it’s important to note whether or not an individual has depth in his/her soul. This is true of Sergei. He is patient and firm, suppressed but energized, gentle but calloused, and foulmouthed but honest. He exists at the center of his family serving as its life support. In doing so, he displays a capacity for sacrifice that demands faithful documentation.  The goal of the filmmaker is to see Sergei’s will, his strengths and weaknesses, his hardships, and his love and affection for his family exposed plainly and honestly.

 Art International Radio/The Clocktower, New York City, received $25,000 to support the Emerging Artists’ Residency Program. The Clocktower Gallery and ARTonAIR.org function as a laboratory for experimentation, working closely and collaboratively with artists, musicians, curators, writers, and producers to develop, realize, and present innovative and challenging work in media ranging from installation to performance, experimental music to radio theatre. Jerome’s grant will support residencies for eight emerging artists who will create experimental, interdisciplinary, intergenerational projects in the visual and audio arts, music, performance, and radio. The residency program provides studio space, staff support, honoraria, and materials. Residencies culminate in installations, exhibitions, and workshop performances.

Atkins, Christopher, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to Dublin, Ireland to learn more about the Artist Residency Programme at the Irish Museum of Modern Art.  It is similar to the Minnesota Artists Exhibition Program (MAEP), which Atkins directs at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, in that it is housed and mentored onsite at the Irish Museum as well as submerged in Dublin’s contemporary art community. Atkins will meet with fellow curators and colleagues as well as current and past participants to hear how the residency program made an impact on their artistic careers. The knowledge and partnerships he expects to gain from the trip will be folded into his plans for developing an exchange program for Minnesota artists, and bringing those artists into closer dialogue with new international colleagues and issues of global relevance.

AUDAIN, CARVER, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to Kaffe Matthews' AuDRey Studio and Research Center, London, England, to study techniques and approaches to multichannel production and presentation. Audain is a self-taught pianist and composer, whose works are explorations in harmonics utilizing the piano, electronic organ, guitar and cymbals. Through digital signal processing and editing techniques, his recent works explore harmonic structures to create an array of slowly shifting sound fields that merge and transform within their physical surroundings. The study with Matthews, a pioneer in the field of electronic improvisation and live composition, will provide Audain an opportunity to further Audain his development as a composer.

Bangsted, Thomas, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to London, Greenwich, and Portsmouth, United Kingdom; and Kaafjord, Tromsoe, Narvik, Bogen fjord, and Langfjord, Norway to visit maritime institutions in Great Britain and specific locations in Norway to conduct research into the specific use and character of disruptive dazzle camouflage during WWII. The camouflage, called Razzle Dazzle, was first put to use in World War I when the Allied navies enlisted artists to paint abstract patterns on the sides of ships, not as concealment but instead to stir confusion with regard to the course, size, speed and direction of the ship. Bangsted plans to study specific historical conditions, geographical locations, and exact patterns to use in his photographic work.

Barlow, Richard, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to London, Harlow, and Lacock, United Kingdom, to visit the site of a 19th Century photograph titled Reflected Trees by Fox Talbot and spend time on the grounds of Lacock Abbey, the Fox Talbot Museum, and key landscape sites from Barlow’s childhood.  Much of his work is landscape-based and derived from secondary sources. He wants to investigate Talbot’s process and the birth of silver-based photography, timing his visit to coincide with a wet collodion process workshop at the Museum to learn more about how the original image was made.

BEALLOR, ANGELA, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to various locations in Lithuania, Belarus, and Russia guided by a search for (and the story behind) hot pink Vladimir Ilyich Lenin lapel pins in the countries of her ancestors.  Beallor will visit monuments and museums while interviewing current residents of USSR states about their history, present, and future (culturally, politically, and personally).  The core purpose is to study and explore through conversations and interviews the present tense relationship to the not-so-distant past of the former Soviet Union.  Traveling throughout these areas will be organized around a search for pink Lenin lapel pins.  She’ll spend her time in street markets, flea markets, and bazaars, searching for the pins, using the search as an entry point for talking with people, and conducting interviews.  She’ll also visit monuments, Communist-era architecture, museums, and photo/film archives. This will inform a current project on which she’s working, which centers on audio interviews of her father about politics, his political radicalization, her Socialist grandparents, and their family life. 

Bell, AnonDa, New York, New York, will travel to Melbourne, Darwin, Tiwi Islands, Maningrida, Kakadu National Park, and Uluru, Australia to explore, study, and document the work of the indigenous people in order to broaden her understanding of the natural world and how it has been represented in various cultures. Her recent artwork considers the tense relationship between humans and the natural world.  She will conduct research of ancient art sites, mine archives relating to indigenous culture, and meet indigenous Australian artists in their own communities.  She will discuss ideas about the natural world, and through her art work, juxtapose this with a Western perspective. Bell is intrigued and curious to learn more about cultures that embrace a harmonious and respectful approach to the natural world versus the desire to claim, occupy, conquer and control.

BLAISDELL, LYDIA, New York, will travel to Vienna, Austria and Berlin, Germany, to do research for a play based on the Austrian Expressionist painter, Oskar Kokoschka's life, specifically his documented affair with an inanimate doll created to mimic his former lover, Alma Mahler. When Kokoschka returned from World War 1 to find that Mahler had married another man, he commissioned a life-sized doll,complete with of Mahler’s spring wardrobe from Paris. He escorted the doll to various Wagner operas and his catalogues show over twenty portraits of the doll in various poses. For nearly a year, his maid and his butler were required to wait on the doll until finally, after a night of drunken revelry, Kokoschka beheaded the doll and tossed it out a window.  Blaisdell’s travel will allow her to fully explore Kokoschka’s life and his paintings in the cities where he is remembered and celebrated. This project is her first full-length play set in a historical time period, drawing on existing figures.