Past
Grantees

VINCENT PEONE and JOSH RUBEN, received a grant in support of The Sea is Blue, a stop-motion animated short that follows the journey of Dina, a girl who falls off her uncle Wolfy’s fishing boat and sinks to the bottom of the ocean. She finds herself in a murky, green, altogether alien world. Saddened by her inability to swim back up to the surface, she begins to cry. It’s then that a group of deep-sea fish hear her cries and surround her. They’ve never seen anything like the glowing blue substance coming from her eyes – her tears. Scared at first, the creatures calm and comfort her. Dina’s unlikely new friends eventually teach her how to swim. Just when she begins to feel at home with these otherworldly friends, an anchor falls – a beacon for Dina to make her way back to her life and her real family. As she leaves, the fish realize that Dina has taught them something – sadness. As Dina is hoisted up to the skies by the anchor of her Uncle’s boat, the fish begin to cry, forever changing the murky green sea into a beautiful blue. Dina is reunited with her uncle, but not without changing the ocean forever.

PERFORMANCE SPACE 122, New York City, received $38,000 in support of the commissioning of new works from six emerging artists, whose works will be produced by P.S. 122. Dedicated to supporting the creative risks taken by artists from diverse genres, cultures, and perspectives for over three decades, P.S. 122 is a hub for contemporary performance and an active member of the cultural community in New York City and across the globe.  It presents artists working in contemporary performance, theater, dance, multidisciplinary areas, new music, media and installation.  Jerome support allows P.S. 122 to commission new works by emerging artists based in New York City and Minnesota.

BENT-JORGEN PERLMUTT received support for Against the Clock, a documentary about car racing.  As Cuba lifts its 50-year ban on car racing, five of its top drag racers prepare their American classics to compete.  The vast changes sweeping Cuba are evident in these drivers’ struggle to gear up for the first official race since the Revolution. From the race’s announcement, through the challenges they face preparing their cars and the obstacles they encounter from the Government, these racers reveal an intimate portrait of life in Cuba today.  The film’s story is told from the perspective of the racers with no narration and few interviews, ultimately allowing the characters to speak for themselves.  Shot mostly hand-held in an observational style, the film will have an intimate, fly-on-the-wall demeanor providing a unique window into a society that could quite possibly be undergoing change. 

Peterson, Sonja, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to the Lake District and London, United Kingdom, to collect resource material and undertake research for an ongoing project that focuses on the Romantic vision of nature juxtaposed with the open frontier of current global financial systems. Recently, she has been making work inspired by the book Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes.  The book focuses on scientists, poets, explorers, and botanists of the Romantic Era.  She’s interested in juxtaposing the Romantic notion of the world with current day dilemmas, drawing parallels between how nature was once considered boundless in the Romantic Era with the idea of the financial market as an open frontier.  Thus far, much of her imagery has come from imagination.  She proposes to visit the homes and the environs of Romantic Era poets and then walk, draw, and document the Lake District countryside that was a source for their writings. She will visit the home and grounds of the Wordsworth Trust, which houses a wealth of manuscripts, books, drawings, and pictures of the Romantic Era.  It also is the beginning point for a number of walking tours to locations that inspired the poets. In London, she will visit the library of the Royal Society of the History of Science and the Chelsea Physic Garden. She will also visit and photogragh the financial center of London. 

PILLSBURY UNITED COMMUNITIES/PILLSBURY HOUSE + THEATRE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received two grants: $36,500 in support of the 2013 Late Nite series and $10,000 in support of the commissioning, development and production of new works by emerging playwrights and the Three Mondays reading series. Launched in 1992 as a professional arts institution committed to the Settlement House tradition of creating art in collaboration with community, the mission of Pillsbury House + Theatre is to produce challenging theater to inspire choice, change, and connection. Non-English Speaking Spoken Here: The Late Nite Series is a transformation of culture where text, music, spoken word, sounds, and images weave together in a fearless celebration of new voices and new art. The Series features new works in development from emerging artists based in New York City and Minnesota. The Three Mondays reading series develops and showcases the works of new and emerging playwrights. The Theatre also commissions and produces new works by emerging playwrights.

Pillsbury United Communities, on behalf of Pillsbury House+Theatre, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $12,000 in support of readings, developmental activities, and mainstage productions of new plays by emerging playwrights based in Minnesota and New York City. The Theatre’s mission is to create challenging theatre to inspire choice, change, and connection. The Theatre illuminates the differences that make each person unique and the similarities that bring people together within an artistic environment that promotes understanding and leads to positive action. The scope of the Theatre’s developmental process begins with commissioning and extends through readings, workshops, dramaturgy, and full production.

PILLSBURY UNITED COMMUNITIES/PILLSBURY HOUSE + THEATRE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $10,000 in support of the commissioning, development and production of new works by emerging playwrights and the Three Mondays reading series.  Launched in 1992 as a professional arts institution committed to the Settlement House tradition of creating art in collaboration with community, the mission of Pillsbury House + Theatre is to produce challenging theater to inspire choice, change, and connection. The Three Mondays reading series develops and showcases the works of new and emerging playwrights.  The Theatre also commissions and produces new works by emerging playwrights on its mainstage.

 Pillsbury United Communities, on behalf of Pillsbury House+Theatre, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $36,500 in support of the 2014 Naked Stages Program. The Theatre’s mission is to create challenging theatre to inspire choice, change, and connection. Naked Stages assists artists in acquiring tools to further their performance careers, including workshop opportunities in performance, critical response skills, marketing, and technical production. The program emphasizes artistic process, and provides a critical and supportive environment for creating new work. This multi-layered program is designed to empower artists to be their most bold and creative and to challenge artists and audiences to push past previous boundaries.

THE PLAYWRIGHTS’ CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $144,000 in support of the Jerome Emerging Playwright Fellowship Program. The Center champions playwrights and new plays to build upon a living theater that demands new and innovative works. Its vision is to be nationally recognized as a leader in the cultivation and promotion of playwrights and their works. Four Jerome Fellowships are awarded annually, providing emerging American playwrights with funds and services to aid them in the development of their craft. Fellows spend a year-long residency in Minnesota and have access to workshops with professional directors, dramaturgs, and actors. Selection is based on artistic excellence, potential for growth, and commitment to a vital life working in the field. 

ANN PRIM received $10,000 for Notes from There, the third and final story of The Vellum Trilogy. The trilogy is a collection of three fictional vignettes Prim began writing in 2009. Each story takes a brief but intimate look into the lives of gay women: a writer, a painter and dancers. Additionally the trilogy also examines rejection, grief, and transformation. The Jerome Foundation funded Little Words, the first chapter of The Vellum Trilogy in 2010.  Notes from There is a story told elliptically, that utilizes dance physically and metaphorically to reveal a tender love story of separation and the emotional transformation that is possible through creative expression.  In the late 1950s in a small modern dance studio run by German émigré Josette Holger, are two very promising but different dancers. The dancers Pepca and Martine become collaborators and lovers but are suddenly separated by Martine’s arrest by immigration officials.  Martine’s arrest causes Pepca to doubt the value of dance in her life and she begins to withdraw from the world. Martine’s reaction to her own arrest and the abrupt separation from Pepca cause her to transcend her physical confinement and enter into the world of her imagination. Martine creates a dance, which she sends to Pepca through a series of notes and hand drawn images. This dance reflects Martine’s confinement and passion for Pepca. These dance notes become an anchor of reality for Pepca and the path back to rediscovering her language of dance.

Printed Matter, New York City, received a disaster relief grant of $10,000 for losses and damages from Superstorm Sandy.

RANPURA, JANAKI, Minnesota, will travel to Athens, Greece, to study contemporary uses of Karagiosis shadow theater. Ranpura will work with puppeteers from the Gig Space of Six Dogs, a contemporary art gallery in Athens. She is interested in Karagiosis as a form of political puppet theater that has a long history and still continues to reinvent itself, making it ideal for her study of characters new and old. Her goal is to return with insight about how to create archetypes based on figures from the contemporary American and global economics scene that are resonant in American culture.

RED EYE THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $31,500 in support of the 2012-13 New Works 4 Weeks Series and the commissioning and production of a new work by an emerging playwright.  Red Eye is a multidisciplinary creative laboratory that supports the development and production of pioneering performance work.  It’s a passionate champion of new work for the stage.  The New Works 4 Weeks Festival includes Works-In-Progress and Isolated Acts.  The overall purpose is to serve emerging artists who are exploring new directions in pieces that would benefit from an extensive reflective process and are best suited to an alternative venue for development.  Artists present new works in group evenings in the Works-In-Progress series.  Isolated Acts is a curated series, often drawn from prior years’ Works-In-Progress showings.  Grant dollars also support Red Eye’s selection of an emerging playwright based in Minnesota or New York City to create a new work for production by the Theater.

RHIZOME, New York City, received $20,000 in support of its Commissions Program.  Rhizome is dedicated to the creation, presentation, preservation, and critique of emerging artistic practices that engage technology.  Through open platforms for exchange and collaboration, it encourages and expands communities around these practices.  Programs, many of which happen online, include commissions, exhibitions, events, discussions, archives, and portfolios.  The goal of the Commissions Program is to support emerging artists by providing grants for the creation of significant works of new media art.  Commissioned works may take the forms of web-based pieces, works that engage mobile platforms, performance, video, installation, and sound art.  Jerome support allows Rhizome to award commissions to emerging artists based in New York City.

Rimpel, Adriana, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to Mexico City, Mexico, to research her maternal Mexican lineage. Rimpel, of Mexican-American and Haitian descent, experienced a profound connection when she visited her mother's family in Mexico nine years ago. With this return trip, she seeks to map the correlations between her and her family, as inspiration and content for new work. Rimpel plans to conduct interviews with family members and research family records and archives to discover the influence of the arts in the lives of her family, their core personal values, professions and specialized skills, and any participation in activism and social justice work.

ROBERTS, MATANA, New York, New York, will travel to Canton, Mississippi, Memphis, Tennessee,and Natchitoches and New Orleans, Louisiana, to conduct institutional research and private interviews for an ongoing, segmented, multi-media sound project based on her ancestral history in the American south. As a jazz composer an improviser, Roberts seeks to synthesize tradition and experimentation, breathing life into five generations of her African-American family's soundscapes, narratives, mythology, and lore. She has been gathering stories and doing online and word of mouth research for several years.  She has enough focus now to journey to the towns and cities where her family lived, and where some still live, to find the authentic textures, rhythms, and sounds one can only discover through direct experience.

The ROCHESTER ART CENTER, Rochester, Minnesota, received $18,000 in support of the 3rd Floor Emerging Artist Series.  The Center offers the opportunity for all people to understand and value the arts through innovative experiences with contemporary art.  Through world-class exhibitions and programs, the Center presents welcoming, integrated, and diverse experiences that encourage questioning, creativity, and critical thinking.  The 3rd Floor Emerging Artist Series is an exhibition program dedicated to promising young Minnesota artists.  The Series reflects shifting trends in contemporary artistic practice and production, and helps to facilitate the creation of new bodies of work in a variety of media including photography, installation, sound, painting, drawing, sculpture, and film.

ROLLINS, ANNIE KATSURA, Minnesota, will travel to Huanxian, Gansu Province, China and Tengchong, Yunnan Province, China to study both the Gansu (Northeast) and Yunnan (Southwest) traditional style of shadow puppet-making and performing methods with the last remaining masters. Master Shi is a performance master in Gansu Province where traditional shadow puppet performances are used to commemorate every holiday, family celebration and funeral. Her apprenticeship with Master Shi will focus on Gansu’s notoriously dexterous performance style of the male and female archetype roles. In the small village of Tengchong, Yunnan Province, Master Liu creates boldly colorful shadow puppets made from bone glue mixed with pure mineral pigments only found in the southwest region. Rollins will learn Master Liu’s unique construction techniques while studying the Yunnan puppetry aesthetic.  

ROULETTE INTERMEDIUM, Brooklyn, New York, received $60,000 in support of commissioning and residency prorams for emerging composers based in New York City. Roulette Intermedium supports artists by presenting a substantial and diverse program of concerts, commissioning new work, paying artists deserving fees, and finding them audiences interested in learning about developments in experimental art. The Commissioning Program provides emerging composers with commissions, stipends for rehearsal and production, and concerts featuring their new works. Commissioned artists reflect diverse musical styles and traditions. Composers selected for the Residency Program receive fees, stipends for rehearsal, and production. Residencies provide space and time for emerging composers to develop new works for Roulettes innovative and adventurous music series.

Rudoi, Paul John, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to the Marion E. Wade Center, Wheaton, Illinois to conduct research on the first two published works of C.S. Lewis, Spirits in Bondage: A Circle of Lyrics and Dymer, in preparation for musical settings of both texts. The Wade Center houses the largest collection of C.S. Lewis materials in North America, including unpublished analyses, letters, and other materials corresponding to the works Rudoi is referencing. In addition to the archival research, Rudoi has arranged to meet with two scholars of Lewis' literature: Dr. Gerald Root from Wheaton College and Dr. Don King from Montreat College. Rudoi is interested in these works for the vitality and blunt musicality of the language.