Past
Grantees

UGLY DUCKLING PRESSE, Brooklyn, New York, received $7,000 to assist with the publication of three books by emerging authors. The mission of the Presse is to publish new poetry, translations, and books by artists. It favors emerging, international, and forgotten writers with a focus on well-defined formal projects that may be difficult to place at other presses. With more than 200 titles published, Ugly Duckling has played an important role in the careers of many poets and artists in New York City and beyond. Its books, chapbooks, artists books, broadsides, and periodicals often contain handmade elements, calling attention to the labor and history of bookmaking. The Presse works diligently to bring attention to emerging artists who do not have established name recognition.

MOLLY VAN AVERY, performance artist, Minneapolis, Minnesota, will travel to Chicago, Illinois, to work one-on-one with playwright Sharon Bridgforth, taking part in her Finding Voice Facilitation Process. Van Avery is seeking this mentorship experience to develop her skills in working on site-specific projects, translating images to the stage, and incorporating more poetic language into her performance work.

BRENNAN VANCE received $8,000 for Like Father, a 30-minute experimental documentary about memory, inheritance and the attempt at reconciliation between the filmmaker and his estranged father, who now suffers from early-onset dementia. The important thing is to remember this while we are still alive in order to live urgently, vibrantly, meaningfully. Like Father examines how the dualities of living and dying, remembering and forgetting, loving and losing manifest in possibly the most bewildering duality of all: father and son. Through the intimate exploration of Brennans fathers battle with dementia, and his own potentially grave genetic relationship with it, Like Father will use a dysfunctional father-son relationship to illuminate the human side of a disease which affects so many and calls our attention to lifes most important and precious possessions: mind and memory, identity and self-awareness, life and death.

VOCALESSENCE, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $26,000 in support of Essentially Choral 2012. The mission of VocalEssence is to champion choral music of all genres, celebrating the vocal experience through innovative concerts, commissions, and community engagement programs. Essentially Choral focuses on the creation and development of new works by emerging composers. Since inception in 2002, it has nurtured emerging composers in the field of writing for chorus. The program is implemented in partnership with the American Composers Forum and features an open call for applications. Selected emerging composers engage in an intensive three-day workshop. Jerome support enables emerging composers from Minnesota and New York City to participate.

SPRINGBOARD FOR THE ARTS, Saint Paul, Minnesota, as fiscal sponsor for choreographer VANESSA VOSKUIL, Minneapolis, Minnesota, received a grant of $8,000 in support of the creation and production of SHIFT. The mission of Springboard for the Arts 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 choreographer; director; performer; visual and sound designer; teaching artist; and creator of dances, interdisciplinary performances, and films. SHIFT is an audience participatory, sound and interactive movement environment that includes a movement-base performance component. The work cultivates individual and social health by fostering a sustainable model of communication and social interaction that is of equal exchange.

JOSHUA WEINSTEIN received $18,000 for Off Duty, a feature length documentary that reveals the gritty life of New York City taxi drivers during the current economic downturn. At the center of the film is Eric Ying, a recent immigrant from China, who is struggling to reinvent himself as a cabbie. Like many Americans today, Eric Ying is unemployed and dreams of running his own business. With a wife and two young sons to support, he turns to a seemingly simple job: driving a taxicab. But it is a Herculean task for someone who can barely speak his customers language as well as navigate the citys 6,174 miles of streets. Off Duty exposes a conflicted version of capitalism, one in which a person will do anything to help feed his family, even at the expense of others, something that is never more apparent than on the roads of New York City. The film also observes the garage fraternity of cab drivers, which offers a rare place of community in a world of insecurities.

BRITNI WEST received $20,000 for Tired Moonlight, a feature-length narrative.  This film tells the story of lonely, middle-aged Dawn. Combustible dreams fail to ignite as she is confronted by lost love in a glorified-pit-stop town. Every town has a post office, lovers, guns, switchblades and beer. You just have to know where to look and when to look the other way. Pitting grand landscapes against dinners of fried chicken and the roar of V8 engines on Saturday nights, Tired Moonlight wanders through Solitaire games (always won), secrets lost in cavernous hearts, and the fifty miles of bad road that always gets you home. 

A grant was awarded to MATT WOLF in support of an experimental documentary titled Arthur Russell Video EP, about the life and visionary music of avant-garde cellist and disco producer Arthur Russell. When Arthur Russell ran away from Oskaloosa, Iowa as a teenager, he made his way to a Buddhist commune in San Francisco. By 1973 the twenty-two year old had moved to New York, where future collaborator Allen Ginsberg fortuitously became his next-door neighbor. Soon Arthur met Tom Lee, and the two became longtime boyfriends. Shortly after arriving in the East Village, Russell discovered the Gallery, an underground disco, where he met the influential DJ Nicky Siano. Arthur went on to produce some of the most vanguard disco hits of the era. At this time, Russell also produced luminous works for solo voice and cello. These breathy revelations fell somewhere between the liminal spaces of downtown New York and Iowa cornfields. Arthur died of AIDS in 1992. In the approximate length of an EP record, a series of video tracks, like chapters, will feature an array of materials illuminating Russells life and work. Each track can play individually like an experimental music video. But in combination, these chapters will form and extraordinary portrait.

GEO WYETH, composer, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to Lancaster County, South Carolina & surrounding areas, investigating the controversial life of J. Marion Sims, the father of modern gynecology (and his great-great-great-great grandfather). Wyeth plans to keep an audio journal of short sensory clips, engage with the citizens of the surrounding area on the topic of Sims life, and research collections of his diaries and letter at area Universities as material for new work. This distant relative was lauded by the medical establishment, but exposed more recently for his inhumane and racist experimental operations on black slave women.

CHRISTINE WONG YAP, interdisciplinary artist, Astoria, New York, will travel to Philadelphia and Berkeley to advance her understanding of positive psychology by attending the conference of the International Positive Psychology Association, and interviewing a leading social psychologist about cognitive science, creativity, and contemporary art during a visit to a contemporary art exhibition. Yap anticipates this experience will provide inspiration for her work. As an artist examining optimism and pessimism, she is interested in how art about happiness can be critically engaging on its own terms.

SPRINGBOARD FOR THE ARTS, Saint Paul, Minnesota, as fiscal sponsor for choreographer CHRIS YON, received $8,500 in support of the development and production of a new work titled The Very Unlikeliness (Im Going to KILL You!). The mission of Springboard for the Arts 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. Springboard has supported the arts community with management and consulting services for more than 20 years. Chris Yon, choreographer and performer, is developing The Very Unlikeliness (Im Going to KILL You!), an evening-length duet. Its currently structured in four parts, which reflect four areas of continued interest, four drawers for different choreographic propensities. The duet will organize information in a way that is unpredictable and often impenetrable. It will combine rhythms and gestures into accumulating repetitive sequences that are formal, soulful, still, slick, mysterious, and melancholic. These dizzying structures will give way to a gut-bucket essence.

ZEITGEIST, Saint Paul, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $23,500 in support of the Zeitgeist/Composer Workshop. Zeitgeists mission is to enliven todays music and expand its public with performances that absorb, stimulate, and hearten. It forges new links between musicians and music lovers through concerts, commissions, recordings, and dialogue with audiences. The Zeitgeist/Composer Workshop is designed to give emerging composers the opportunity to develop creative ideas and stretch artistic boundaries in an environment that celebrates exploration and experimentation. The focus is not on the completion of a composition but rather on the generation and development of ideas and the exploration of musical possibilities.

Jerome Foundation awarded a grant of $26,000 to the ZENON DANCE COMPANY AND SCHOOL, Minneapolis, Minnesota, in support of the development and production of new works by three emerging choreographers. Zenons mission is to sustain an artistically excellent, professional dance company by presenting the commissioned works of emerging and locally, nationally, and internationally recognized modern and jazz choreographers to the broadest and most diverse audiences and communities possible, including those with disabilities. It accomplishes this through performance, education, and outreach. Artistic Director Linda Z. Andrews selects emerging professional choreographers to set new works on the company. The choreographers bring excitement and risk to the works.

The BROOKLYN ARTS EXCHANGE, Brooklyn, New York, as fiscal sponsor for choreographer LUCIANA ACHUGAR, received $8,000 in support of the creation, development, and production of the work PURO DESEO. The mission of BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange is to advance artistic development and unite diverse constituencies by providing support for emerging performing artists, arts education for Brooklyn youth from low/moderate income families, teaching residencies in Brooklyn public schools, and an annual presenting season in its theater. achugars PURO DESEO embraces the darkness of the cavernous black box and its inherent magic and mystery. achugar draws inspiration from paranormal phenomena, the occult, and representations of monstrosity in Gothic film and literature. Through a visceral and intuitive experience of sound, movement, and the exaggerated presence of light, long-time collaborator Michael Mahalchick and achugar build their performance as an incantation. PURO DESEO will be produced at The Kitchen in the spring of 2010.

The AMERICAN COMPOSERS FORUM, Saint Paul, Minnesota, received a two-year grant of $197,000 in support of various programs supporting emerging composers. The Forum enriches lives by nurturing the creative spirit of composers and communities. It provides new opportunities for composers and their music to flourish, and engages communities in the creation, performance, and enjoyment of new music. Jerome support is directed toward the Jerome Fund for New Music, which provides support to emerging composers based in New York City and Minnesota. Dollars will support commissions and enhancement funds to further the development and reach of the commissions. This is an open application program with selection by an independent panel. Jerome funding also supports the Minnesota Emerging Composer Awards. Through a nomination process, emerging composers working in world music, jazz, and electronic forms are commissioned to create and produce new works.

Jerome Foundation Directors authorized a two-year grant of $32,000 to the ANDERSON CENTER FOR INTERDISCIPLINARY STUDIES, Red Wing, Minnesota, in support of 12 residencies for emerging artists based in Minnesota and New York City. The Anderson Center is a regional cultural resource that provides a supportive environment for the pursuit of creative projects by artists while also advancing appreciation of the arts by presenting cultural programs and events for residents of the Red Wing area and other communities in southeast Minnesota. Residencies of two to four weeks duration from May 1 through October 31 enable artists to advance work-in-progress or initiate new work. A Residency Program selection panel reviews applications submitted in response to an open call and awards residencies. Jerome-supported artists are in residence during the month of August each year.

PANGEA WORLD THEATER, Minneapolis, Minnesota, as fiscal sponsor for ANICCHA ARTS, also based in Minneapolis, received $7,000 for the creation, development, and production of a new work for a fall 2010 concert. Pangea World Theater illuminates the human condition, celebrates cultural differences, and promotes human rights by creating and presenting international, multidisciplinary theater. Aniccha Arts is an interactive performance dance company whose members strive to find a strong relationship among dance, sound, and media through interactivity while decreasing the divide among audience and stage. Artistic Director Pramilla Vasudevan will work with collaborators to create Words To Dead Lips (dont say it unless I can eat it), an interactive performance that uses a childs perspective to ruminate on the fulfillment of human potential through indoctrination in the historical context of war in America. The piece employs technology as a mechanism for integrating and exploring the relationship of dance, visual media, and sound in three physical spaces.

ART IN GENERAL, New York City, received a two-year grant of $38,000 in support of the New Commissions Program. Art in General supports artists in the production and presentation of new work. It is a resource for emerging artists and developing practices. The 2010-11 exhibition season will mark the sixth year of the New Commissions Program through which the organization has supported and presented 29 significant new works by emerging artists. The program commissions five to seven New York-based emerging artists each year to create new projects in any medium or form. The artists receive commissions; production fees; an exhibition venue; a critical publication; and conceptual, logistical and organizational support.

A grant was awarded to REUBEN ATLAS for The Brothers Hypnotic, a feature-length documentary about an all-brass band of brothers from the South Side of Chicago. Brotherhood has long been a guiding ideal in the African American community. For the eight young men who make up the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, brotherhood has the dual significance of family ties and racial solidarity. Theyre all sons of Phil Cochran, a legendary Chicago trumpeter who turned his back on commercial music to pursue astral jazz (with Sun Ra), proto-funk, and Black Power. What was Cochrans ultimate avant-garde experiment? His own sons. They lived an insular communal existence with Cochran and their two mothers Mama Maia and Mama Aquilla complete with homemade clothes, veganism, and invented holidays. Starting at age three and continuing well into adulthood, the boys performed in the family band and were developed as artists and complex human beings under the ever-watchful eye of their determined father.

THE FIELD, New York City, as fiscal sponsor for choreographer KIMBERLY BARTOSIK, received $10,000 in support of the development and production of a new work. The Field encourages and cultivates appreciation of the performing arts, and frequently acts as a fiscal sponsor for independent artists in the development, creation, and presentation of music, dance, theater, film and video works. Bartosiks choreographic project, i like penises: a little something in 24 acts, is an evening-length spectacle reflecting on ideas of exchangeability, accumulation, and replacement. In this work for four dancers and three designers, Bartosik will examine the American ethos of dont fix it, replace it. Bartoskis work is built upon the development of a virtuosic movement language, rigorous conceptual explorations, and the creation of highly theatricalized environments.