Past
Grantees

KEVIN T. ALLEN received support for Western Ruin, an experimental film that explores tourist performance and historical re-enactment of the American West at two roadside tourist attractions known as 1880 Towns in South Dakota. Interviews will be conducted with the sites founders, historical re-enactors, and tourist performers. These interviews will be combined with footage of historical performance, experimental portraiture of site artifacts and the surrounding Western landscape. The 30-minute film employs methods of archeology and sensory ethnography to excavate traces of the living history of the American West.

The AMERICAN COMPOSERS FORUM, St. Paul, Minnesota, received $100,000 in support of the Jerome Fund for New Music and the Minnesota Emerging Composer Award Program. The Forum enriches lives by nurturing the creative spirit of composers in 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 Jerome Fund for New Music is open to emerging composers, based in New York City and Minnesota, who seek support for the creation and development of a new compositions and the development and reach of the commissions after their premieres. The Fund for New Music is open to composers, composer/performers, improvisers, and sound artists. Jerome funding also supports the Minnesota Emerging Composer Award. Emerging composers working in world music, jazz, and electronic forms are commissioned to create and produce new works.

The ANDERSON CENTER, Red Wing, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $35,000 in support of emerging artists residency-fellowships. The Center is a regional cultural resource that provides a productive environment for the pursuit of creative projects by artists and writers while also advancing appreciation of the arts by presenting cultural programs and events for regional residents. Residencies enable artists and writers to advance work-in-progress and/or initiate new work. For the month of August, the Anderson Center provides subsidized residencies of two and four weeks in duration to emerging artists based in New York City and/or Minnesota. The Center provides a quiet space, uninterrupted time, and supportive resources to artists as they pursue their work.

APERTURE FOUNDATION, New York City, received a two-year grant of $30,000 in support of the publications of three books by emerging photographers. Aperture is dedicated to advancing photography via its magazine, books, traveling exhibitions, and educational programs. Throughout its history, Aperture has been a champion of emerging artists and provided an important launch pad for their careers. Its catalog of over 500 books constitutes one of the most comprehensive and innovative libraries of photography and art.

"LESLEY ARIMAH, writer, Saint Louis Park, Minnesota, will travel to Nigeria to conduct personal and academic research to aid in the completion of her novel.  She will focus on the underpinnings of Nigerian culture and the persistence of certain practices over the centuries. Arimah’s family left Nigeria when she was a teenager, but she has family members there who will help arrange visits with priests and practitioners, and attend ceremonies and masquerades. This research will expand the knowledge base from which she writes, informing her characters’ cultural rationales."

ART IN GENERAL, New York City, received a two-year grant of $38,000 in support of the participation of emerging New York City-based artists in the New Commissions Program.  The mission of Art in General is to support artists in the production and presentation of new work.  In 2005, the New Commissions Program was launched in response to a need for programs that offered individual artists direct support to develop and exhibit new and challenging projects.  Since that time, Art in General has commissioned projects from more than 35 artists, each of whom receives an artist fee, a production fee, curatorial and organizational support, and a solo exhibition.  New Commissions artists create and exhibit works that represent significant advancements and turning points in their careers.

EPHRAT ""BOUNCE"" ASHERIE, choreographer, New York City, will travel to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to study the influences of the Brazilian dance styles, Frevo and Funk, on break dancing. Bounce integrates multiple dance styles in her work as a B-Girl, from the smooth footwork of house dance to more traditional forms, such as ballet and modern. She is interested in the evolution of break dancing over the last forty years and in studying how these cultural dances of Brazil have influenced the b-boys and b-girls of the country.

THE ASPEN INSTITUTE, Washington, D.C., received $7,500 to enhance dissemination activities for the National Study of Artist-Endowed Foundations, which Jerome Foundation previously supported. This study is the first comprehensive research effort to examine the emerging field of private foundations endowed by artists. The extended dissemination of the studys findings and recommendations address important opportunities spurred by a strong interest among key audiences including artists considering foundation formation; artists family members and associates; professional advisors in legal and financial matters; directors and trustees of established foundations; and broader audiences including art dealers, art museum curators, art history scholars, and policy makers in culture and philanthropy.

THE FIELD, New York City, as fiscal sponsor for choreographer KIMBERLY BARTOSIK, Brooklyn, New York, received a two-year grant of $20,000 in support of the creation and production of the choreographic project You are my heat and glare. This work is a tangle of three duets created as multi-genre cycles using dancers, designers, and voice artists. The specific site of the performance is found in relationship to another persons body, developed without any connection to a specific space or architectural structure for presentation. The urgency of intimate relationships drives the question of how and when we desire to go back to something or someone, and how long we endure one situation before seeking a change. The work will premiere in 2013, and will be seen as durational performances prior to that date.

NICHOLAS BOGGS, writer, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to Paris and Saint Paul-de-Vence, France, to conduct research for a book-in-progress, Loving James Baldwin.  The book is a personal account of his search on the untold story of Baldwin’s collaboration and love affair with French outsider artist Yoran Cazac, before, during, and after the publication of their little-known children’s book for adults, Little Man, Little Man: A Story of Childhood.  By visiting the places where Baldwin and Cazac lived, Boggs’ hopes to collect details and rich experiences to provide more profound substance to his writing.

NICOLE BRENDING was awarded a grant in support of The Dollhouse, a feature-length experimental animated film using puppetry with custom-made dolls to create a psychological portrait of Junie Spoons. Spoons was a child star whose premature rise to international pop fame and her strained relationship with her abusive mother drives her to insanity by the age of 18. Getting her start on a Star-Search-like program at the age of eleven, sweet and cute Junie Spoons dancing and singing prowess gains the attention of a record label producer who signs her as one of the labels girl groups. Pushed by her narcissistic and controlling mother, and primed by the record producer, her first album Spoonful hits the charts and Junie is suddenly skyrocketed into international stardom by the age of 13. But her rise to fame is not paved with gold. When she tries to rebel against the manipulation that has kept her in line with her mothers self-serving agenda, she is met with the backlash of her mothers wrath. Without any where-with-all or sense of self to free herself from her mothers tyranny, Junie becomes a doll in her mothers dollhouse by her eighteenth birthday.

The BROOKLYN ARTS EXCHANGE (BAX), Brooklyn, New York, received $10,000 in support of its Artists in Residence program.  BAX’s mission is to encourage artistic risk-taking and stimulate dialogue among diverse constituencies by providing a nurturing, year-round performance, rehearsal, and educational venue.  From residencies leading to award-winning work, to low-cost space rental, to classes for the very youngest aspiring artists, BAX has purposefully constructed programs that support the full trajectory of artistic development.  The Artist-in-Residence program is an urban residency extending over two years.  It is tailored to meet each artist’s needs, process, and artistic practice.  Each artist receives 250 hours of rehearsal space per year and an annual stipend.  The residency includes consultations with the artistic director, group meetings with the six resident artists, and opportunities to present works at BAX.

"REBECCA DOSCH BROWN, writer, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to Oakland, California; Belle Mead, New Jersey; New York City; Washington D.C.; and Baltimore, Maryland, to investigate through a poet’s eye the social construct of Normality (and its counterpart Abnormality) across time and space, focusing on sites critical to disability history and on meeting artists and children with disabilities who contest that fabrication. Brown’s travel will be inspiration for poems that unearth and unhinge the myth of Normal.  "

ANDRES CABALLER0 was awarded a grant in support of El Pastor, a sixty-minute documentary that follows the lives of Latin American sheepherders who come to the United States to work in complete isolation in the American West. Every year, hundreds of guest workers are recruited from South America to work as sheepherders in the United States. Once they arrive, they are dropped off in the deserts and mountain ranges of the American West, where they remain for months in complete isolation, living in trailers and tent, with thousands of sheep, a horse and some dogs. Extreme weather conditions, wild animals and solitude make up the dark side of a profession and primitive lifestyle that can also be romanticized by the beauty of the surrounding environment. The film follows a shepherds life in his homeland of the Chilean Patagonia, his arrival in the U.S., and his journey through different seasons in the desert and mountains of northeast Idaho.

THE CAMERA CLUB OF NEW YORK, New York City, received $14,000 in support of solo exhibitions in the Darkroom Residency Program. The Camera Club is a home for photographers to develop their craft, providing both a hands-on, working facility and a collegial environment for discussion and the exchange of ideas. Its mission is to promote the art and science of photography through exhibitions, lectures, classes, residencies, a blog, newsletter, and special events. It provides low-cost workspace to members. The Darkroom Residency Program provides full-year access to darkroom facilities, a shooting studio, and two digital scanning stations. The Program supports the work of outstanding emerging photographers based in New York City by offering them free workspace with stipends and a culminating solo exhibition in a nurturing, photo-friendly environment.

"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.