Past
Grantees

SCOTT, THOMAS, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to Sarajevo, Bosnia, to research Bosnian Sevdah music or Bosnian blues, through study with local musicians as facilitated by Sarajevo-based musician and recording engineer Alan Omerovic.  With Omerovic's help, he will arrange lessons and master classes to explore the unique instrumental techniques and individual roles in the Sevdah music ensemble, including frame drum, accordion, violin, clarinet, voice, and sargiya (Bosnian oud).  As a multi-instrumentalist and orchestrator, Scott feels it is critical to have a working knowledge of the ranges and fundamentals of the instruments for composing. He is attracted to the unique blend of Eastern and Western influences and the polyrhythmic dexterity and variety of meters and time signatures found in the Sevdah music.

jill sigman/thinkdance, New York City, received a grant of $4,000 in support of the development and production of Perma-Culture.  Founded in 1998 by choreographer Jill Sigman, jill sigman/thinkdance presents conceptual dance that asks questions through the medium of the body.  It exists at the intersection of dance, theater, and visual installation, often using non-traditional environments, formats, and ways of engaging the viewer.  Permaculture is the conscious design and maintenance of agriculturally productive ecosystems to create the diversity, stability, and resilience of natural ecosystems.  Sigman will create a repertory of movement scores based on permaculture principles and sustainable living systems.  The scores will be refined through working with multiple groups of dancers.

Smack Mellon Studios, New York City, received a disaster relief grant of $20,500 for losses and damages from Superstorm Sandy.

SMACK MELLON, Brooklyn, New York, received a two-year grant of $20,000 to support emerging artists in the Artist Studio Program. Smack Mellon’s mission is to nurture and support emerging, under-recognized, mid-career, and women artists in the creation and exhibition of new work by providing exhibition opportunities, studio workspace, access to equipment, and technical assistance for the realization of ambitious projects. Launched in 2000, the Artist Studio Program provides free studio space; access to a workshop for metal, wood, and general fabrications; a common area equipped with the latest technology; and fellowships to six artists for an 11-month period. Smack Mellon hosts two Open Studio events each year as well as sponsored visits from curators, critics, and gallerists, which provide significant exposure and invaluable career-building opportunities.

THE SOAP FACTORY, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $24,000 in support of the participation of emerging Minnesota and New York City artists in the 2013 Exhibition Program.  The Soap Factory is a laboratory for artistic experimentation and innovation, dedicated to supporting artists and engaging audiences through the production and presentation of contemporary art in a distinctive environment. Its expansive spaces offer artists unusual areas for sculpture, installation, painting, performance, photography, film, and video.  The curatorial process enables a variety of viewpoints to be engaged in selecting artists.  The Soap Factory strives to serve artists at pivotal stages in their careers, those who demonstrate a serious commitment to their practice, have evidence of some professional achievement but no substantial record of accomplishment, are engaged in contemporary dialogue, and have great potential but are under-recognized in the field.  

SPRINGBOARD FOR THE ARTS, St. Paul, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $64,000 in support of Artist Development and Resource Programs.  Springboard is an economic and community development organization for artists and by artists.  Its work is about building stronger communities, neighborhoods, and economies.  Artists are an important leverage point in that work.  Springboard’s mission is to cultivate vibrant communities by connecting artists with the skills, information, and services they need to make a living and a life.  Jerome support underwrites the participation of emerging Minnesota artists in Artist Development and Resource Programs, encompassing professional development workshops, resources, referral services, support networks, and innovative services.  

 STREB, Brooklyn, New York, received $23,000 in support of the Emerging Artist Commissioning Program. Founder Elizabeth Streb invents action ideas that are archetypal, noticeable, and understandable. The outcome is a mixture of slam dancing, exquisite and amazing human flight, and wild action sport. STREB’s Emerging Artist Commissioning Program, housed at the company’s Williamsburg home SLAM, accepts proposals from movement-based artists, including choreographers, aerialists, and circus artists. The goal is to create a pool of artists who can capitalize on the resources distinct to SLAM so that, either literally or conceptually, they may use SLAM’s special and unusual characteristics and qualities to inspire new and exciting creative experiments. Selected artists receive commissions, time, space, and resources tailored to the nature and scope of their projects. They have opportunities to showcase their work and receive feedback from both Elizabeth Streb and audiences.

THE STUDIO MUSEUM IN HARLEM, New York City, received a two-year grant of $30,000 in support of the Artist-in-Residence Program.  The Studio Museum is a nexus for artists of African descent locally, nationally, and internationally, and for work that has been inspired and influenced by Black culture.  It is a site for the dynamic exchange of ideas about art and society.  The Artist-in-Residence Program has supported over 100 artists who’ve gone on to establish highly regarded careers.  The program is an 11-month studio residency for three emerging artists working in any media.  The artists are given studio spaces, stipends, and a culminating exhibition in the Museum’s galleries.  

CHRIS TEAGUE, received a grant in support of The Woods Are Burning, a feature narrative about Kelly Macomber, a shy, tomboyish teenager looking for a sense of identity and belonging as she approaches a future beyond high school. Kelly’s father, Hank, is a brash but well-meaning single dad who runs a logging crew. He worries that his once close relationship with his only daughter is getting weaker as she grows older. Kelly falls for Foster, a charismatic and mysterious young man who draws her deep into a world of radical environmental activism in Oregon. When Foster abandons her, she goes back to the protective world of her father. But in one last act of radical activism, she sends her life in an unsure direction.

THE TEAM (THEATRE OF THE EMERGING AMERICAN MOMENT), New York City, received $10,000 in support of the creation and production of RoosevElvis.  This theater company is dedicated to dissecting and celebrating the experience of living in America today.  It devises plays by examining a wealth of material, ranging from existing texts to images taken from visual art and film, and then combining that research with original writing and staging.  RoosevElvis is a duet about spaces large and tiny, universes in which we trap ourselves, and the landscapes we create for other inhabitants–whether they like it or not.  Two actors take on two icons of American masculinity: Teddy Roosevelt and Elvis Presley.  RoosevElvis blurs the lines between femininity and masculinity, and focuses on the gulf between two paradigms: that of a clear-cut, finite, and controllable universe, and that of a hybrid, chaotic, and chance-filled place.

TREVINO, WILLIAM, New York, will travel to South Korea to attend the Kodanja Shimsa (master-level martial arts training retreat) in South Korea to further his research in martial arts training to devise original theatre performances. Trevino is a black belts and a recognized master of Soo Bahk Do. He has been invited to participate in a retreat in Kyung San Buk Do to train with senior masters U.U. Kim, S.H. Park, U.S. Kim, and Grandmaster H.C. Hwang.  Trevino will integrate these teachings into his ongoing work with his company, Corporeal Arts Incorporated, translating the martial arts practice into his theatrical work.

BRENNAN VANCE received $25,000 for The Missing Sun, a feature-length narrative film about two families forced to put their disparate beliefs to the test and to reckon with their clashing cosmologies in the midst of a potential solar catastrophe. Sun explores the crossroads of faith and doubt, love and loneliness, generational differences and apples fallen not-so-far from the tree. The film intimately follows seven characters in their individual searches to not only understand what is happening in their crumbling external worlds but to decipher their shifting internal worlds as well.

SPRINGBOARD FOR THE ARTS, St. Paul, Minnesota, as fiscal sponsor for VANESSA VOSKUIL, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $20,000 in support of the creation, development, and production of The Student.  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.  Voskuil is a director, performer, designer, community organizer, teaching artist, and creator of dances, interdisciplinary performances, and films.  Her work often explores physical, emotional, and psychological space, creating impressionistic textures of human experience that respond to the cultural environment and humanity’s emotional spectrum.  The Student is a large-scale, community-inclusive performance that explores the topic of learning: how one learns, what one learns and internalizes, and how one chooses to act. 

JESSICA WALKER was awarded a grant for 366, an experimental film that explores the significance of aging in communities throughout New York City by documenting one birthday celebration for each calendar day of the year.  While exploring variety among the different types of people born at various times of the year, this repeated inquiry establishes a lens on shared customs and common values across demographics.  A strong emphasis will be placed on visual connections that capture the essence of each birthday celebration.  Video and sound will be choreographed through editing into an abstracted, non-linear narrative viewing experience that is 366 minutes in length.  The final viewing format for the project will be influenced by Douglas Gordon’s 24 Hour Psycho and Christian Marclay’s The Clock, which allow the audience to enter and leave the viewing experience whenever they wish due to the film’s expanded running time.

DEACON WARNER received $15,000 for the feature-length documentary The Co-op Wars. The Twin Cities has by far the largest number of food cooperatives in the country, including several of the largest, forming the basis for an alternative food economy which helped it gain the distinction of the #1 metro area for local food in the nation. According to the filmmaker, this co-op system has contributed to the high level of health and community cohesion in the Cities and has provided a basis for the economic survival of many sustainable family farms in the region.  Many in the food justice movement in other parts of the country look at the Twin Cities’ strong co-op and local food culture with envy, but its accomplishments did not come without struggle. The Twin Cities were the site of the “Co-op Wars” of the mid-1970s, a struggle over issues of class, race, health, ecology and the nature of social change that descended into threats, violent takeovers, and even a car bombing. These issues remain alive for activists of today as they make efforts to create a food system, and a society, that is just, sustainable, and healthy. Through verite footage, interviews, and animation, this film will link “The Co-op Wars” struggle of the past with issues that continue to be wrestled with in the nationwide contemporary food movement today.

Weber, Claudia, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to Los Angeles, Pacific Palisades, and West Hollywood, California, to visit and study visionary residential buildings as part of her research for a project titled "Living Architecture," which will involve site-specific installations and an artist book.  Her goal is to address the concept of “apartment” not as a predefined dwelling unit that houses people but rather as an experimental structure and laboratory within which people can reflect upon contemporary modes of living.  The idea is to challenge defined spaces such as “living room” and conventional modes of “interior decoration”, and instead to re-activate them though theoretical and practical interventions. The research trip will allow her to compare past visionary living ideas to contemporary ones, and help her in the development of her own approach, which is to create through her art practice an awareness of contemporary living conditions, which currently oscillate between the extremes of house foreclosures and luxury living trends.

Wilson, Letha, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to Honolulu, Oahu; Kilauea, Kauai; Kihei, Maui; and Kona and Hilo, Hawaii to investigate, document, and study the unique and magnificent natural landscapes of these islands, from the forested mountains to the lava fields.  Wilson’s work as an artist involves an ongoing engagement with and observation of the natural world.  She pushes the genre of landscape photographs, using photography as a material through which to pursue more complex issues of human interaction with nature and architecture, and how they collide or co-exist, as well as issues of sublime beauty and how this changes over time through decay, destruction, and disintegration.  She expects to return from the trip with a large amount of material and ideas for new work and projects. 

THE PLAYWRIGHTS’ CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, as fiscal sponsor for the Workhaus Collective, received a grant of $15,000 in support of the production of new works by emerging playwrights. The Center champions playwrights and plays to build upon a living theater that demands new and innovative works. The Workhaus Collective is a group of Minneapolis-based playwrights who curate and produce each other’s work as company-in-residence at The Playwrights’ Center. The mission of the Collective is to create a direct and immediate relationship between playwright and audience by fully producing original plays under the artistic leadership of the playwright. The three-play seasons are chosen by mutual consent of the Collective. Each playwright serves as Artistic Director for the duration of his/her play’s production. The remaining playwrights take on other roles necessary for  production. Jerome’s subsidy will support the productions of Christina Ham’s The Hollow and Jeanine Coulumbe’s Homegrown.

ZEITGEIST, St. Paul, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $33,000 in support of the Zeitgeist Composer Workshop.  A quartet of musicians animated by a spirit of adventure and collaboration, Zeitgeist has presented works of substance with passion and integrity for more than 35 years.  With its instrumentation of two percussion, piano, and woodwinds, it strives to forge new links between musicians and music lovers through live performances, commissions, collaborations, recordings, and dialogues with audiences.  The Zeitgeist Composer Workshop is a five-day workshop designed to give emerging composers the opportunity to develop creative ideas and stretch their artistic boundaries in an environment that celebrates exploration and experimentation.  The Workshop focuses on the generation and development of ideas and exploration of musical possibilities.  Each composer brings sketches of material to develop using Zeitgeist as a laboratory.

JOHN AKRE received support for Demolition Dreaming, a semi-fictional docutoon and meditation on urban renewal and the way Akre feels people have treated their urban history in Minneapolis. It will be an animated film mixed with documentary footage of building demolitions in the city over a ten-year period. The film will focus on a man who saw the buildings of the Minneapolis Gateway district constructed and then demolished. It is about a person who has to cope with a city changing so dramatically around him. It is a story of someone who saw history built and removed and then has to re-create it inside his own head. It is a story about an artist who paints advertising on the sides of buildings, and then, when the buildings are demolished, tries to preserve what is lost by painting the former city on the sides of the remaining buildings, until they too are all smashed down.