Past
Grantees

SMACK MELLON, New York City, received $10,000 in support of the Artist Studio Program.  The mission of Smack Mellon 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, and access to equipment and technical assistance for the realization of ambitious projects.  The Artist Studio Program provides six emerging artists with access to private studio space, shared workspace, and a $5,000 fellowship for 11 months.  From a competitive pool of applications, the six artists chosen are given the opportunity to create new work, develop existing work, establish relationships with arts professionals, and connect with peers in the arts community.  Studio artists work in a wide range of disciplines including photography, video, film, performance, painting, collage, public art, sculpture, printmaking, and mixed media installation.

THE SOAP FACTORY, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $22,000 in support of the participation of emerging Minnesota artists in the 2012 Exhibition and Residency Programs. 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 unique and historic environment. The Soap Factory provides a supportive environment for emerging artists, and remains unabashedly artist-centered. It offers artists a vibrant, active place for creative experiment and innovation.

SOCRATES SCULPTURE PARK, Long Island City, New York, received a two-year grant of $46,000 in support of the Emerging Artist Fellowship Program. Socrates is an open studio and exhibition space for artists and a neighborhood park for local residents. The Parks existence is based on they believe that reclamation, revitalization, and creative expression are essential to the survival, humanity, and improvement of the urban environment. The Emerging Artist Fellowship Program gives emerging artists a chance to work outside the confines of a traditional studio environment in a community that is supportive and encouraging. Artists experiment and take risks with their work, realize innovative and ambitious projects, and exhibit in an open, professional forum. For many artists, Socrates offers a first opportunity to create work on a large scale in a public, outdoor space.

SOHO REPERTORY THEATRE, New York City, received a two-year grant of $30,000 in support of the creation, development, and production of new works by emerging playwrights or performance ensembles based in New York City.  Soho Rep, a hub for innovative contemporary theater, is dedicated to artistic excellence by supporting distinctive, diverse, and pioneering theater.  Jerome dollars support new play development programming, which includes a Writer/Director Lab that fosters ongoing relationships between early career writers and directors in the creation of new plays.  The Studio is a commissioning and development program that is project specific, and strengthens theatrical works in development, constituting the engine behind the mainstage.  Soho Rep produces annual seasons that include works by emerging playwrights.

STEFANIE SPARKS was awarded a grant for Cathy Coppola, a neo-realistic, comedic, character-driven narrative feature. The film will present a satirical look at class, ambition and the female experience as seen from the fringes of the contemporary American independent film world. Cathy Coppola will focus on primary character Cathy Klinkmans struggle to get her feature film made while suffering from a loss of confidence. After winning a film competition at North Seattle Community College, Cathy quickly makes her way to Los Angeles. She lands a job on a successful LA television show. She gets caught up in the fast-paced lifestyle of LA and gets fired from her job after just a few months, so she heads to New York and Film School. Five years later she receives her Masters degree from Columbia and is again on her way to the top. She eventually lands an interview with a renowned film producer. The interview goes well, but Cathy is surprised to discover that her job will be taking the producers dogs on the weekends, not assisting on a film as she had hoped. And so begins a long series of mishaps, until Cathy resorts to anything to get ahead, including posing as the illegitimate daughter of Francis Ford Coppola. Suddenly her world is occupied by industry people who cant get enough of her. But where will all this lead? Will Cathy make it in the world of independent film, or will her deception be her final undoing?

MICHÉLE STEINWALD, arts administrator, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, to participate in the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance to deepen her understanding of contemporary performance (focus on dance), create a peer network of emerging leaders in the presenting field, and develop a strong curatorial voice in her role as Assistant Curator for the Performing Arts at the Walker Art Center. Her study goals are to further develop language for communicating artistic and curatorial intent, improve her leadership skills, create strategies for impactful connection between contemporary dance artists and new audeinces, and broaden her capacity to serve furture projects.

MICHÉLE STEPHENSON received support for American Promise, a documentary twelve years in the making that chronicles the school experiences of two African American boys and their families, offering an unprecedented look at the complexities of race, parenting, privilege, and education at the dawn of the 21st century. Stephenson and her husband Joe Brewster turned the camera on themselves and began filming the experiences of their five year-old son Idris and his best friend Seun, as they started kindergarten in 1999. The boys enrolled at the prestigious Dalton School on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, just as the private institution boldly strengthened its commitment to cultivating a diverse student body. Over the 12 years of this film, we see the boys and their families navigate learning differences that later become diagnoses, struggle with stereotypes and identity, and ultimately take increasingly divergent paths on their road to graduation. We also see a rare and vivid portrait of middle-class African American families as the filmmaker parents wrestle with doubt and angst over their sons educational journey. Both sets of parents grapple with how best to support their sons and interact with teachers and administrators. All of this is set against the backdrop of a persistent educational achievement gap that dramatically affects African American boys at all socioeconomic levels across the country. The film puts a face to the unique social and emotional needs of these boys and poignantly calls into question commonly held assumptions about access, resources, and what really influences academic performance.

STREB, Brooklyn, New York, received $21,000 in support of the Emerging Artists Commissioning Program.  STREB is dedicated to supporting and presenting the work of choreographer Elizabeth Streb at home and on tour throughout the world.  It brings audience and community into the artistic process by breaking down barriers to participation and access with new approaches to creation, education, and presentation.  Built on the organizing principle of Extreme Action, as developed by choreographer and action architect Elizabeth Streb, the company’s mission is to create opportunities for artistic discovery and connection.  In the Emerging Artists Commissioning Program, emerging choreographers and movement artists are selected to develop new work at SLAM, Streb’s Lab for Action Mechanics.  The artists, each with his/her own artistic language expressed through distinct media, work individually, in collaboration with each other, or in partnership with Streb and her company.  The new works remain fluid throughout the process, changing over time and in response to artist and audience feedback. 

The TEXTILE CENTER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $31,000 in support of the Fiber Artist Project Grants Program for emerging artists, and the Center’s program of support and services for emerging artists.  The Textile Center, a national center for fiber art, honors textile traditions and promotes excellence and innovation in fiber art.  It supports artists working in all textile forms including weaving, quilting, knitting, sewing, dyeing, felting, needlework, lacemaking, basketry, and beading.  The Fiber Artist Project Grants Program is designed to advance the professional development of emerging fiber artists in Minnesota and foster vitality and excellence in the field of fiber art.  Project grants are awarded to four emerging artists, enabling them to undertake projects ranging from studies with esteemed artists to purchasing specialized equipment and exploring new techniques.  The program culminates in an exhibition.

TICKLE THE SLEEPING GIANT, New York City, received $9,000 in support of the development and presentation of Used, Abused and Hung Out to Dry, by Artistic Director Trajal Harrell. The mission of Tickle the Sleeping Giant is to advance interest in and understanding of postmodern and contemporary dance and their application to everyday life. It carries out this mission by creating original dance works, performances, interdisciplinary collaborations, and publishing initiatives. Hiroshima Mon Amour is a work for three dancers divided into two parts: Mon Hiroshima and Mon Amour. Taking its title from the 1959 film by Alain Resnais about two lovers, a Japanese man and a French woman involved in a conversation about memory and forgetfulness. Harrells new work is a conversation with culture and aesthetic style where remembering and forgetting play together to develop something neither Butoh nor non-Butoh but wholly art. Harrells work has, since 2001, been based on a theoretical conversation between the parallel aesthetic histories of the voguing dance tradition and the early postmodern dance tradition.

The TOFTE LAKE CENTER, Ely, Minnesota, received $18,800 to support residencies for emerging artists based in New York City and Minnesota. Located on the shores of Tofte Lake, a beautifully secluded lake in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness of Minnesota, the Center is a creative retreat for artists, scholars, and thinkers of all disciplines. From June through September, the Center offers creative residencies for individuals, arts groups, and organizations seeking to create work while in residence in a natural setting with arts facilities and comfortable cabins. Its a destination for artists who crave dedicated time to work on their projects.

TOFTE LAKE CENTER, Ely, Minnesota, received $25,450 to support three weeks of residencies for emerging creative artists based in Minnesota and New York City.  Founded in 2007, the Center is a retreat for artists, scholars, and leaders wishing to expand and deepen their creative potential.  There are daily opportunities for interaction, stimulation, and reflection in the Center’s facilities, which include both individual and community work spaces.  The Center positions itself as an incubator for innovation and inspiration and a cradle for creativity and community.  Week-long residencies are open to creative individuals who seek individual growth through workshops or master classes, artists who crave dedicated time to work on their projects, organizations that want to focus on goals and missions, and leaders who want to exchange ideas with colleagues in their field.  Jerome dollars are directed toward the participation of emerging individual artists and ensembles to further the creation of new works.  

NICOLE TRESKA, writer, New York City, will drive across the country to San Francisco, Archer City, Taos, Denver, Graceland, Nashville, New York City, Baltimore, and Mississippi, visiting independent bookstores, artists, editors, and writers to investigate and explore ideas of literary landscape in America.  Through interveiws, visits, observations, and experiences, Treska will begin a series of essays about the people and places that reside within and create the places defined by their representations in the great works of American Literature; for example, Poe’s Baltimore, Faulkner’s Mississippi, McMurtry’s Texas, Anderson’s Ohio, and Steinbeck’s California. While on this journey, she also plans to talk to staff at independent bookstores thriving in the face of corporate competition and e-publishing.

Homegoings is a feature documentary exploring the African American way of death. Filmed at Owens Funeral Home in Harlem and rural South Carolina, the film takes an up-close and unusual look into the rarely seen world of undertaking, one of the few occupations Black Americans could enter freely after slavery. Combining cinema verit? with intimate interviews and personal photographs, Homegoings tells the stories of several families who have lost loves ones, while painting a vivid portrait of the passionate man behind their funerals.

LARISSA VELEZ-JACKSON, choreographer, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to Vienna, Austria, to participate in study, observation, artist mentorship, critical dialogue, and networking in the field of Contemporary Dance and Performance at the danceWEB Scholarship Programme at ImPulsTanz-Vienna International Dance Festival. Velez-Jackson will engage in a one-on-one mentorship with Benoît Lachambre, a choreographer, performer, and improviser concerned with the dynamics of communication and perception.  The intense course of study and peer dialogue will provide inspiration for new work and deepen her creative process as well as her connection with choreographic peers.

VOCALESSENCE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received $24,839 in support of the 2013 Essentially Choral program.  The mission of VocalEssence is to champion choral music of all genres, celebrating the vocal experience through innovative concerts, commissions, and community engagement programs.  The focus is on commissioned and first performances of music as well as important, but rarely heard works of the past.  Essentially Choral focuses on the creation, development, and production of new works by emerging artists.  It nurtures emerging composers in the field of writing for chorus, and is undertaken in partnership with the American Composers Forum.  Emerging composers from Minnesota and New York City spend an intensive period in the Twin Cities working on the development of new pieces.

VSA MINNESOTA, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $38,000 in support of Project Grants for Artists with Disabilities and developmental programs and services provided to professional artists with disabilities.  The mission of VSA Minnesota is to create a community where people with disabilities can learn through, participate in, and access the arts.  The purpose of the Project Grants is to encourage the creation of new artistic work by emerging Minnesota artists with disabilities.  Grants may fund the creation and production of new work, travel to research and present new work, professional documentation of new work, purchase of supplies or equipment to create new work, professional development, and rental of space to create and present new work.  An open call and panel review process determine the annual selection of Project Grant recipients.

A grant was awarded to STEPHANIE WANG-BREAL for TOUGH LOVE, a feature-length documentary about the conflicting values, uncertainties and tensions that surround the child welfare system. The film follows 23-year old Hasna Hanna, a first-generation Bangladeshi immigrant who, along with her devoted husband Philly, navigates the child welfare system of New York City to get their children back and out of foster care. By following Hanna and Philly, the film will provide a birds eye view of how the system works from the inside. Viewers will experience, firsthand, the hardships and value judgments Hanna and Philly face, as individuals and as a couple, as they attempt to keep their family together.

MAYA WASHINGTON was awarded a grant in support of Through the Banks of the Red Cedar. A play on the Michigan State University fight song, this work follows the filmmakers father, wide-receiver Gene Washington (College Football Hall of Famer and 50 Greatest Vikings honoree) and notable teammates from the 1965 and 1966 Michigan State National Championship teams, as they change the literal face of college and professional football, impacting the lives of their children and generations to follow. The film unfolds through the eyes of the filmmaker, Maya Washington, as she uncovers the individual journeys of these legends their coaches, spouses, friends, children, and grandchildrenrevealing the ways in which football scholarships impacted the lives of players of color, who were literally dropped into an integrated environment for the first time. This film also looks at the lives of generations that followed at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in America. Ultimately, Through the Banks of the Red Cedar is Maya Washingtons story in that it looks at how winning a Big Ten football scholarship in 1963 changed her fathers life, the face of the game, and her own future.

A grant was awarded to CALEB WOOD in support of his experimental hand drawn animated film, MN: Animated Portrait of Minnesota, which focuses on Minnesotas diverse and unique landscapes, wild life, and humanity. The film will stagger back and forth from nature and wildlife to civilization and human behavior. The juxtaposition of these elements will present the year long observed relationship that Minnesotans have with their seasonal environment, ranging from oblivious to harmonious. It will also highlight the beauty of the state's designated and untouched wildlife. A balance between nature and humanity will be the underlying motif. The overall message of MN: Animated Portrait of Minnesota is to present a series of truths that the state of Minnesota holds. The film will be a didactic look at the environment, as well as a work aiming to push the boundaries of how hand drawn animation can be made and used to share experiences in life. This is not a narrative story with a clear conclusion, it is a collection of moments, found through personal exploration in art and environment, composed in a poetic manner.