Past
Grantees

Marchetti, Anthony, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to Fort Myers, Florida to conduct research  to contribute to the photographic documentation of his maternal grandmother's post World War II journey as a Hungarian refugee.  His artistic goal is to photographically trace this journey of loss and starting anew. He will interview his grandmother’s older sister, who will share details of the journey and provide a structure for the photographic project. Although the first impetus was personal, the narrative is universal, that of leaving home and beginning again, of crossing borders and bringing one’s original culture while acquiring new culture.  It continues his exploration of place and how humans interact with space to assimilate the familiar and unfamiliar to create a new life. 

SHONA MASARIN, received a grant in support of Ghost line, a 16mm experimental film that invokes the spaces of Vaudeville through a Dada/Surrealist eye. The film plays with abstract patterns, rhythms, and alchemical techniques to conjure a lost world. It begins with a vaudevillian preparing to perform for a nonexistent audience. Viewers find themselves in an old theater, shut down and eroding where vaudeville, a relic of the past, has been long forgotten. Summoning this lost history through a non-sequitur that channels multiple characters and personalities, the viewer imagines “lines" of history on a fragile emulsion.

Mayobre, Esperanza, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to the Carpathian Mountains: Targu Jiu and the Monasteries of Bucovina and Bucharest, Romania, to research The Brancusi Trail Part 3, from the geometric pattenrs of the Convent of Muscovina to the Endless Column in Targu Jiu.   Mayobre started her research on Brancusi at the Guggenheim Museum and continued her investigation at the Philadelphia Museum and the Atelier Brancusi in Paris. The geometric patterns, frescoes, Romanian folk art, and wood carving at the Convent of Bucovina are said to have been a main influence on Brancusi.  She’ll travel to Targu Jiu to visit his famous outdoor sculptures.  Mayobre expects the trip to allow her to explore a new territory in her work, taking her work to outside spaces. 

Springboard for the Arts, St. Paul, Minnesota, as fiscal sponsor for Kathy McTavish, Duluth, Minnesota, received $9,000 in support of the development and production of a new work, the origin of birds.  Springboard’s mission is to cultivate a vibrant arts community by connecting artists with the skills, contacts, information, and services they need to make a living and a life.  A cellist, composer, and multimedia artist, McTavish blends cello, found sound, electronic effects, and abstract, layered, still-motion film.  the origin of birds includes new compositions and stories presented in a transmedia platform, utilizing the technique of telling a single story or story experience across multiple platforms using current digital technologies.  The immersive installation of the origin of birds includes multiple projections, live cello performance, and portals into an interactive web environment for viewers with mobile devices.  

METCALFE, ANNA, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to Big Island, Hawaii, to research boat forms and floral design at the Donkey Mill Holualoa Foundation for Arts and Culture, where she has been accepted for a one month residency.  In a new body of work, she will explore the mythologies, traditions, and boat forms of the Polynesians, a culture that inspires formal aspects of her work.  She’ll participate in workshops at the Center and will apprentice with Scott Seymour, a master floral designer who specializes in Native Hawaiian plants and the cultural significance of local flora.  She hopes to make flower design an integral part of the way she designs flower boats.  She’ll be conducting research at the Hawaii Maritime Center and Bishop Museum along with other Hawaiian cultural museums and monuments.

MILKWEED EDITIONS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $20,000 in support of the publication of three books by emerging writers. Founded in 1980, Milkweed Editions is an independent book publisher whose mission is to identify, nurture, and publish transformative literature, and build an engaged community around it. Milkweed publishes works of fiction, literary nonfiction, poetry, and literature for young readers. With Jerome’s subsidy, it will publish two collections of poems and one work of creative nonfiction by emerging writers based in Minnesota.

The Minnesota Council on Foundations, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a membership and general support grant of $5,555.  The Minnesota Council on Foundations works to expand and strengthen a vibrant community of diverse grantmakers who individually and collectively advance the common good.  Members of the Council represent three-quarters of all grantmakers in the state, awarding almost $1 billion annually.  They include private, family, and independent foundations; community and other public foundations; and corporate foundations and giving programs.  The Council is an advocate for ethical and responsible charitable giving and a resource for grantmaking, creating and sharing information for and about grantmakers. The Jerome Foundation has been a member since 1976.

MIXED BLOOD THEATRE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $15,400 in support of the commissioning, development, and production of new works by emerging playwrights.  Mixed Blood Theatre, a professional, multi-racial company, promotes cultural pluralism and individual equality through artistic excellence, using theater to address artificial barriers that keep people from succeeding in American society.  Its vision is to be the definitive destination where theater artists and audiences representing the global village can create and share work that spans a ripple effect of social change and revolutionizes access to theater.  The development and production of new works are central and longstanding components of Mixed Blood Theatre’s work.  Jerome’s support allows the Theatre to develop and produce new works by emerging playwrights based in New York City and Minnesota. 

CRYSTAL MOSELLE received funding for The Wolfpack, a documentary that tells the unbelievable story of six teenage brothers who come out of exile and into the world in New York through meeting their first friend.  The six black-clad and long-haired Angulo brothers have been nicknamed “The Wolfpack.”  Bonded by the extreme circumstances of their childhood –– never allowed to leave their tiny family apartment, never allowed to cut their hair, never introduced to the Internet, and almost no contact with the outside world –– they became near-mythical characters.  This is the story behind the myth, of an unusual family locked away from society in the middle of a Manhattan housing project. Dressed like Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs, the over-caffeinated brothers, ranging in age from 13 to 20, eventually display the psychological repercussions of constant reclusion.  This culminates in one brother’s escape from the family apartment while donning the mask of Halloween’s Michael Myers, which results in his admission to a mental hospital. Throughout the documentary, Makunda, the Wolfpack’s 17-year-old alpha brother, takes us on the brothers’ Kafkaesque journey, starting with their personal stories and archival photos found in their dark cave of a home.  We discover the teachers who have carved out their personalities, a mother who firmly believes in home-schooling, and an alcoholic, Yogi father who enforced the boys’ isolation.  And lastly, their television –– loaded with a library of Scorcese and Tarantino –– through which the Angulo boys have found their biggest moral compass. 

MOVEMENT RESEARCH, New York City, received $25,000 in support of the creation and development of new works by emerging New York City-based choreographers in the Artist-in-Residence program.  Valuing individual artists, their creative processes, and their vital roles within society, Movement Research is dedicated to the creation and implementation of free and low-cost programs that nurture and instigate discourse and experimentation.  Movement Research strives to reflect the cultural, political, and economic diversity of its moving community.  The Artist-in-Residence program provides commissions, rehearsal space, performances, national and international exchanges, and related opportunities designed to support the individualized creative processes of the participating artists.

MU PERFORMING ARTS, St. Paul, Minnesota, received $45,000 in support of the Mu/Jerome New Performance Program.  Mu produces great performances born of arts, equality, and justice from the heart of the Asian American experience.  It strives to create global acceptance of Asian American culture and perspectives through theater and taiko.  Founded in 2006, the New Performance Program offers opportunities to Asian American artists to work with Mu Performing Arts in the development of new performance works.  The concept underlying the program is to bring in artists who are not primarily playwrights to create new works for the theater. Commissions, readings, and workshops develop these new works for production.

New York Foundation for the Arts, New York City, received a disaster relief grant of $5,000 for losses and damages from Superstorm Sandy.

 New York Live Arts, New York City, received $35,400 in support of commissions for the creation and production of new works by emerging choreographers. New York Live Arts is an internationally recognized destination for innovative movement-based artistry offering to audiences access to art and artists notable for their conceptual rigor, formal experimentation, and engagement with social, political, and cultural currents of this time. It commissions, produces, and presents performances and serves as the home base for the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company. Commissions support the creation of new works by artists, providing individualized and comprehensive support, and carrying forward a legacy of supporting artists in the creation of new work. Jerome’s support is primarily directed to the creation of new work by emerging choreographers for full production in the 2013-14 season. A portion of the Jerome grant will be used to commission new works that will be presented first in the Studio Series, a research laboratory for in-progress showings, and then commissioned and fully produced.

Nguyen, Stephen B, Brooklyn, New York, will travel active geologic sites in Iceland to create an “idea seed bank” of images, video, audio, sketches and other data.  This will inform the development of immersive sculptural installations that convey the same sense of phenomenal presence as the moving landforms themselves. Nguyen is drawn more to the energy and movements that shape landscape than the landscape itself.  Iceland is a rich location to witness current and active reshaping of the landscape.  At Pingvellir, he will visit the visible junction of the Eurasian Plate and North American Plate and witness the tension of their separation.  He’ll visit Iceland’s most volatile volcano, which lies under a massive glacier, a relationship that has the potential to cloud the skies with ash and moisture for thousands of miles.  He’ll visit other glaciers and evidence of subterranean activity at the Geysir Hot Springs Geothermal Area.  He expects the trip to help him imagine ways of conveying a sense of movement and presence through more abstract means in his works.

Nigoghossian, Jo, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to North Pantanal, Brazil, on a research trip to observe sentient life forms and their encounters to inform new sculptural works.  Without any tools for documentation other than her senses, for two weeks, she plans to visit the depths of a barely touched habitat.  She’ll investigate several ongoing interests in her work—confrontation of new form, anthropomorphism, and organic force through resistant materials. Due to its annual flooding and undisturbed nature, the Pantanal Basin is a habitat for 200 species of mammal and 650 species of bird.  She wants to witness the way plant life and animals interact with each other, the connections, the morphing and camouflage, their construction methods, and their own viewing systems.  She hopes that the trip will alter ideas about construction and behavior and produce more phenomenological results in her work.

 Northern Clay Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $26,500 in support of the Jerome Ceramic Artists Project Grant Program. Founded in 1990, the Center’s mission is the advancement of the ceramic arts. Its goals are to promote excellence in the work of clay artists, provide educational opportunities for artists in the community, and encourage and expand the public’s appreciation and understanding of all forms of ceramic art. Programs include exhibitions, classes and workshops, studio space and grants for artists, and a sales gallery. The Jerome Ceramic Artists Project Grant Program supports emerging ceramic artists. The 2014 program will provide three grants of $6,000, with a culminating exhibition of produced work in January 2015. The project grants include activities such as experimenting with new techniques and materials, subsidizing studio time, purchasing supplies, and collaborating with other artists. There is an open call for applications and review by an independent panel of experts in the field.

ORTIZ-VIZCAY, ORLANDO ARUÁN, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to Cuba to study the historic turning points in the development of Afro-Haitian music, percussion instruments, and the fusion of Afro-Haitian music with European music, in order to comprise a reference, structure, and philosophy for his future compositions. Ortiz-Vizcay was born in Santiago de Cuba and is of Cuban-Haitian descent. His formal musical training was nevertheless classically focused on Western jazz with no historical background or in-depth study of African elements in Cuban music and Haitian-Cuban music. In recent years, he has found his compositional interests pulled toward his cultural roots. Ortiz-Vizcay plans to interview individuals from key Afro-Cuban and Haitian-Cuban cultural centers and heritage societies as well as attend rehearsals and performances to understand how ensembles are arranged. He will take lessons with masters of Afro-Haitian percussion instruments such as premier tambour, second tambour, tambora, and catá, to understand the rhythmic variations.

OSWALD, SYLVAN, New York, will travel to Birmingham, Alabama, and Chicago, Illinois, to do experiential and archival research for a play on SUN RA in preparation for a fall 2014 production in New York City. As a white trans playwright living in New York, Oswald has had to make enormous imaginative leaps to write about an African-American male who grew up in segregated Birmingham, Alabama and came of age in 1940s and 50s Chicago. He was drawn to write about SUN RA because of his story of personal transformation – of self-production both literally and spiritually, the story of aradical, black, and probably queer and autistic artist in the twentieth century. Oswald will trace Sun Ra’s migratory path, beginning with the site of his childhood home near the Birmingham Amtrak station and traveling to Chicago’s South Side where he first made his name as a bandleader. Oswald will research SUN RA’s life-long collaborator and business partner, Alton Abraham, whose papers are archived at the University of Chicago and at the Experimental Sound Studio in Ravenswood.

PALISSIMO, New York City, received $12,000 in support of the development and production of Endangered Pieces, a multidisciplinary performance work merging dance, soundscape, and visual art. Palissimos mission is to attain artistic liberty in pursuit of communion/dialogue with the audience through live performances, research, and teaching. Palissimo is under the direction of choreographer, dancer, and sound designer Pavel Zutiak. Endangered Pieces responds to recent unprecedented shifts in the global landscape. It unravels as an opus of dream-like scenes, excavating the demise of a national dream and the relentless desire for meaning and solace in the face of global upheaval. It grows out of Zutiaks ongoing engagement with the sometimes gruesome, sometimes mundane images of life, reduced to elemental clarity. Endangered Pieces will premiere in the fall of 2013.

PANGEA WORLD THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received the second year of a two-year grant of $32,000 and a new commitment of $36,000 over two years in support of the participation of emerging playwrights in Alternate Visions.  The mission of Pangea World Theater is to illuminate the human condition, celebrate cultural differences, and promote human rights by creating and presenting international, multidisciplinary theater.  Jerome funding assists Pangea in developing new works by providing participating emerging artists with dramaturgy, workshops, and public readings to prepare their performances for mainstage productions.  Pangea hosts discussions between artists and audiences and facilitates public dialogues on issues raised in each of the plays.  Over the course of two years, five emerging Minnesota artists receive Jerome support.