Past
Grantees

"NONA KENNEDY CARLSON, writer, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to Dickinson, Williston, and Watford City, North Dakota, to study the epicenter of the Bakken Oil Boom. Research of the social, socioeconomic, and geographical landscape of this area and the impact on citizens, farmers, ranchers, landowners, oil company representatives, “Man Camp” managers, and those working in the oil field, will inform the characters, setting, and tone of her novel, Boom. Carlson’s immersion in local culture and the landscape will authentically inform her writing about family, greed, loss, class warfare, the repercussions of war, and complicated environmental issues."

THE FIELD, New York City, as fiscal sponsor for choreographer YANIRA CASTRO, Brooklyn, New York, received $9,000 in support of the development and production of a new work, The People to Come. Working through her organization a canary torsi, Castro creates works that reflect a collaborative and multidisciplinary nature, anchored in a live performance and extending into other media and online platforms. The People to Come is a participatory performance installation and dance, radically altered each night by performers using material contributed by the communities surrounding a performance site and the audiences attending the performances. While Castro meticulously creates the scenario, People challenges the directors authorship and asks the questions: What is the divide between spectator and participant? How are these roles inverted/shared? Who is the translator? Who is the narrator?

 Cave Canem, Brooklyn, New York, received $18,000 in support of the participation of emerging New York City-based writers in two writing workshops.  Cave Canem is a home for the many voices of African American poetry and is committed to cultivating the artistic and professional growth of African American poets.  The organization was founded on the premise that African American poets deserve and benefit from having a place of their own in the literary landscape.  Jerome funds will support a fall 2012 workshop titled Worth Repeating, which will consider the uses of repetition from a variety of angles in eight sessions.  In the spring of 2013, Cave Canem will offer an eight-session workshop titled Writing across Cultures, open to emerging poets of color and Arab American poets.  Participants will be encouraged to push beyond their comfort zones; experiment with new forms, grammars, and vocabularies; and consider cultural inflections on poetics.

THE CENTER FOR FICTION, New York City, received $32,000 in support of the 2012-13 New York City Emerging Writers Fellowship Program. With its exceptional book collection, beautiful reading room, expanding website, and ever-growing array of creative programs, the Center seeks to serve the reading public, to build a larger audience for fiction, and to create a place where readers and writers can share their passion for literature. The Center launched a fellowship program for New York City-based emerging writers with Jeromes support in 2010-11. Writers receive a stipend, space in the Writers Studio, access to the Writers Library, free admission to all Center events including the Craftwork Series, discounted tuition to workshops, mentorships with freelance editors, two public readings, and an opportunity to publish in its online magazine Literarian. Emerging writers work, exchange ideas, interact with one another and readers, and find community in this program.

CHRISTINA CHOE received support for 1984 Redux (working title), a personal documentary about Choes journey exploring the nature of propaganda. The film will incorporate elements of animation, performance art, satire, hoaxes/pranksterism, and interviews through the lens of propaganda. The film aims to push the boundaries of fiction and documentary, where the line between performance and reality, lies and truth, are blurred, providing us a meta narrative of how propaganda functions.

MU PERFORMING ARTS, St. Paul, Minnesota, as fiscal sponsor for actor and playwright Sun Mee Chomet, St. Paul, Minnesota, received $9,000 to support the development and production of How to Be a Korean Woman.  Mu produces great performances born of arts, equality, and justice from the heart of the Asian American experience.  It advances Asian American culture and perspectives through theater and Taiko.  One of its artistic values is to provide professional development opportunities for emerging Asian American artists.  Actor and playwright Sun Mee Chomet is expanding her play How to Be a Korean Woman into a full-evening solo work.  This one-woman show shares the story of her reunion with her Korean birth family and the expectations that were both met and left unmet.  Funding allows her to add the voices of her adoptive family into the body of the play, work with a choreographer to further develop the dance/movement sections, provide for the composition of original music to accompany the performance work, and produce the play outside of Minnesota.  

CATHERING CHUNG, writer, New York City, will travel to Leipzig, Göttingen, and Berlin, Germany, and Paris, France, to conduct research for her next novel about students of a famous female mathematician (based on historical figures from Germany and France) during the first half of the 1900s, when women could not attend university. Chung’s research will center on the challenges her characters might have faced as revealed through personal papers, university policies, news articles, and photographic archives. Having firsthand experience with the geographic settings in her novel—streets, places, graveyards, churches—will help her piece together her characters’ daily lives.

MAYA CIARROCCHI received support for Overburden, an experimental short video. Every year, 43 million tons of coal are taken from West Virginia through mountaintop removal mining. Most people outside of West Virginia probably imagine this is done by miners working deep underground at tasks they have done for generations. However, since the 1980s, the coal companies have used far fewer miners and far more explosives to blast through the tops of mountains to their coal seams within. In this world, the immediately recognizable rolling tips of the Appalachian range are called overburden. Ciarrocchi decided to create the film Overburden after witnessing mountain top removal firsthand during a research trip to West Virginia last summer. Her work will be a full and split-screen, single channel experimental video comprised of footage of active and abandoned mines from the ground and from the air, juxtaposed with video portraits of activists, local residents, miners, and coal company officials. The video images will reflect the conflicting realities of life in West Virginia: the lushness of the landscape and the desolation of the mines. This work will be documentary in style, but will contain no commentary or interviews. The goal is to create a durational work of open narrative that presents no single agenda other than exposing the complex issues surrounding energy production in the United States.

"NICHOLAS J. CLAUSEN, documentary filmmaker, St. Paul, Minnesota, will travel to Rockport, Maine, to attend the Maine Media Workshops and take a seven-day class entitled Documentary Camera, which examines the technical and creative roles that the video camera plays in documentary filmmaking.  The course will involve the study of composition, shot design, blocking, and camera moves as well as film theory, history and criticism with an emphasis on the camera."

ROY R. CLOVIS, JR., filmmaker, New York City, will travel to Panama City and Bocas del Toro, Panama, to study the experiences of current day Afro-Caribbean Panamanians, many of whom are descendants of Panama Canal builders who immigrated from the Islands of the West Indies.  Clovis has a strong personal connection to this pursuit as his family history is deeply rooted in Rio Abajo, a well established enclave in Panama City.  He will spend most of his time in Rio Abajo, Colon and Bocas del Toro conducting interviews designed to capture the voices, personal stories, mannerisms and energy of the people.  Clovis plans to integrate this research into a screenplay he wishes to write and direct.

"JOHN COLBURN, writer, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to Ghent, Belgium, to attend the Fairy Tale Vanguard Conference for research into his current writing projects.  Colburn’s fiction and hybrid poetic forms borrow from the tropes, worldview, and images of folk and fairy tales. Attendance at the conference will provide intimate access to some of the top writers in the field of contemporary tales."

"KENNA-CAMARA COTTMAN, choreographer, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to Pikine, Senegal, West Africa, to investigate Sabar dance culture and the Griot tradition that maintains the artistic culture and creativity of West Africa.  Through cultural immersion with the Niange Family of Griots, Cottman will learn the dance and drum rhythms of the Wolof people in Senegal. West African dance forms are at the heart of Cottman’s choreographic work.  This research trip will expand her movement vocabulary and provide deeper historical context and connection to inform her future work."

SCOTT CUMMINGS was awarded a grant for BUFFALO JUGGALOS, a half-hour experimental video portrait of the Juggalo community of Buffalo, New York. Juggalos are a subculture of fans of the band Insane Clown Posse, a clown-themed hardcore hip-hop duo from Detroit known for their controversial lyrics and hardcore following. Juggalos have gained media attention due to several violent episodes that have lead law enforcement in many states to classify them as a street gang. This reputation is augmented by the Juggalos exaggerated style they paint their faces in evil clown make-up for community events and concerts. Behind the make-up, the stereotypical image of the Juggalo stands as white, poor, overweight, unattractive, strung out on drugs, and prone to violence in other words, White Trash. This experimental video portrait will explore that characterization as both true and untrue.

DANSPACE PROJECT, New York City, received a two-year grant of $65,000 in support of commissions to emerging New York City and/or Minnesota-based choreographers for the presentation of new works in the Danspace Project season.  Danspace Project presents a vital community of contemporary dance artists in the historic St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery.  Danspace supports a diverse range of choreographers in developing their work, encourages experimentation, and connects artists to audiences.  Its commissioning initiative is the foundation of its mission. 

THE DEBATE SOCIETY, Brooklyn, New York, received $10,000 in support of the development and production of the theatrical work Blood Play.  The Debate Society creates new plays through the collaboration of Hannah Boss, Paul Thureen, and Oliver Butler.  It is obsessed with nostalgia,crumbling Americana, aging, and loss.  Many of its plays explore the American experience through the lenses of hope and failure.  The Debate Society’s seventh full-length production, Blood Play is inspired by anti-Semitic medieval accusations of blood-libel wherein Jewish men were said to menstruate and seek out and eat Christian babies to replenish the blood they lost during menses.  The Debate Society took the stories of these horrific charges and translated them into a dark thriller of sorts, focusing on fear mongering, rumor in communities, and how terrifying our capacity to believe can be.

ARISLEYDA DILONE, filmmaker, New York City, will travel to Santo Domingo and Barahona, Dominican Republic to continue research and development for a personal documentary on gender and assimilation.  Born with XXY chromosomes, this is a very personal journey for intersexed filmmaker Dilone, who wishes to juxtapose the experience of intersexed females in the Dominican Republic to her own as a Dominican who grew up in a primarily Caucasian suburb.  Dilone will visit with anthropologists and sociologists in Santo Domingo and travel to the province of Barahona to meet a professor who has conducted researh on intersexuality and has agreed to introduce Dilone to many of his subjects.  This research will culminate in a documentary film on intersexuality called La Hora de Volver/Time To Return.

Support was awarded to JEAN-MICHEL DISSARD & GITTE PENG for the documentary, I Learn America. At the international High School at Lafayette, a public school in New York City dedicated to serving newly arrived immigrant teenagers, more than 300 students speaking two-dozen languages from 50 countries come together in a unique educational experience. While they have different stories some have come to live with their parents for the first time in years, some have left their families behind, others have escaped poverty or the brutality of civil war only to live in public housing and confront urban violence here all strive for a good education and a better life while confronting the all-too-real possibility that they may never live the American dream. Who are these children, and what is the America they know? I Learn America weaves together the stories of five of these students, from new arrivals learning their first words of English to high school seniors poised to graduate.

DIXON PLACE, New York City, received a two-year grant of $58,000 in support of the Mondo Cane! Commissioning Program and the Artist-in-Residence Program for emerging artists based in New York City.  The mission of Dixon Place is to support and nurture the development of new work and work-in-progress from diverse artists and to build new audiences for the work.  The mission is carried out through the presentation and encouragement of new and experimental work in performance art, literature, dance, and music.  Through Mondo Cane!, Dixon Place commissions artists to develop and produce new works of performance, theater, and dance.  The Artist-in-Residence Program offers emerging artists in theater, performance art, puppetry, and dance space and resources to develop adventuresome new work.  

BLAIR DOROSHWALTHER received a grant for Out in the Night, a feature-length, character-driven documentary examining the case against four young, African American lesbians, who defended themselves against an attacker and were sent to prison. On a hot summer evening in 2006, in the gay-friendly West Village neighborhood of New York City, a group of African American women in their late teens were sexually threatened and physically attacked by an older man. Even though no killing took place as they tried to defend themselves, the media reported the event as Attack of the Killer Lesbians. The justice system gave them unprecedentedly harsh prison sentences despite the fact that they had no previous criminal records. The Fire This Time focuses on the four women who went from being victims of a physical assault to being incarcerated as perpetrators. The film examines the events of that night from all sides and scrutinizes how and why these women were immediately criminalized.

THE FIELD, New York City, as fiscal sponsor for the FAYE DRISCOLL DANCE GROUP, Brooklyn, New York, received a two-year grant of $20,000 in support of the development and production of the work Thank You for Coming.  The Field supports and sponsors the development, creation, and presentation of musical, dance, theatrical, film and video works.  Choreographer Driscoll strives to investigate new forms of theatrical experience aimed to provoke feeling, stimulate the senses, and activate the mind.  She is interested in expanding ideas of what dance is and creating work that is both entertaining and socially engaged.  In this new work, Driscoll investigates how a private process can be transformed by taking it into the public realm and, conversely, how the public’s response can affect that which is personal.