The General Mills Foundation, the Art and Martha Kaemmer Fund of HRK

The General Mills Foundation, the Art and Martha Kaemmer Fund of HRK Foundation, and the Jerome Foundation announce the 2012 Travel and Study Grant Program recipients.

Thirty-three grants totaling $134,271, ranging in size from $2,000 to $5,000, were authorized. The Travel and Study Grant Program awards grants to emerging artists in Minnesota and the five boroughs of New York City, and arts administrators in Minnesota. Funds support travel for professional and creative development. Grant categories for this round were dance, film and video, and literature.

Panels in each arts discipline reviewed 274 applications, 98 from Minnesota and 176 from New York. The Jerome Foundation Directors reviewed and authorized the following panel recommendations:

FILM & VIDEO

The Film and Video Panel examined 83 applications: 18 from Minnesota, and 65 from New York City. Panelists were Simon-Hòa Phan, Professor in the Art Department of The College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University, Collegeville, Minnesota; television producer, media educator, and independent filmmaker Dan Bergin, Minneapolis, Minnesota; and independent filmmaker Jennifer Redfearn, Brooklyn, New York.

Kathy Huang, documentary filmmaker, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to Guangzhou, China, to experience firsthand the thriving community of African traders and lay the groundwork for a documentary that takes a fresh look at China through the eyes of these new immigrants. Since 2003, the population of Africans in China has grown at a dizzying rate: 30 to 40 percent annually.

Huang will spend her time in Guangzhou observing life in African churches, markets, salons and restaurants, and also talking to local Chinese who interact regularly with Africans. This trip will provide Huang a rich orientation to the landscape of African immigrants in China.

Nicholas J. Clausen, documentary filmmaker, St. Paul, will travel to Rockport, Maine, to attend the Maine Media Workshops and take a seven-day class entitled Documentary Camera, which examines the technical and creative roles that the video camera plays in documentary filmmaking.

Roy R. Clovis Jr., filmmaker, New York City, will travel to Panama City and Bocas del Toro, Panama, to study the experiences of current day Afro-Caribbean Panamanians, many of whom are descendants of Panama Canal builders who immigrated from the Islands of the West Indies.

Arisleyda Dilone, filmmaker, New York City, will travel to Santo Domingo and Barahona, Dominican Republic to continue research and development for a personal documentary on gender and assimilation.

Cully Gallagher, documentary filmmaker, Minneapolis, will travel to Nairobi and the western provinces of Kenya to prepare for production of his first feature-length documentary. Gallagher will learn from community development organizations and the people they serve.

Devin Horan, filmmaker, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to France, Belgium, Germany, Poland, Czech Republic, Austria, and Hungary to conduct preliminary research, location scouting, production planning, and writing for a feature film based on the life of Austrian poet Georg Trakl.

Aleshia Mueller, filmmaker, Minneapolis, will travel to Ecuador to improve her Spanish; deepen existing connections and make new connections with people regarding the protest art of dissident visual artist Oswaldo Guayasamín.

Mara Pelecis, filmmaker, Minneapolis, will travel to Jaunlaicene, Latvia, to learn the rare Maléniski dialect of the Latvian language, so that she can understand published texts written by her storyteller grandfather.

Nerina Penzhorn, filmmaker, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to South Africa to conduct research for a documentary film about South African tabloid newspapers in terms of how they function as a voice for marginalized South Africans and how their reporting on the supernatural challenges the rationalist ideals of South African journalism and post-apartheid democracy.

LITERATURE

The Literature Travel and Study Program Panel reviewed 108 applications, 55 from Minnesota and 53 from New York City.

Catherine Chung, writer, New York City, will travel to Leipzig, Göttingen, and Berlin, Germany, and Paris, France, to conduct research for her next novel about students of a famous female mathematician (based on historical figures from Germany and France) during the first half of the 1900s, when women could not attend university.

Chung’s research will center on the challenges her characters might have faced as revealed through personal papers, university policies, news articles, and photographic archives. Having firsthand experience with the geographic settings in her novel — streets, places, graveyards, churches—will help her piece together her characters’ daily lives.

Sangamithra Iyer, writer, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to London and the cities of Yangon and Mandalay in Myanmar, to research historical documents of Burma in the 1930s and witness current conditions to inform a creative nonfiction book project, Divining Water, which blends memoir, family history, and reportage.

Iyer’s project looks at the parallels between her work as a writer and engineer with her paternal grandfather, a civil engineer and water diviner who was active in the Freedom Movement in India.

Bushra Rehman, writer, New York City, will travel to Istanbul, to conduct creative research at historic sties, write fairy tales inspired by Turkish history, and include these stories in her modern version of the Arabian Nights in which a Muslim woman saves her skin by telling fairy tales during her FBI interrogation.

Rehman is exploring, in a fantastical way, the state of United States relations with the Muslim world and the experience of what it means to be Muslim in the year 2012, as an American citizen.

Rollo Romig, writer, Brooklyn, New York, will travel to Istanbul, to study the history of progressive Muslim movements for a memoir about growing up Roman Catholic and converting to Islam, with a focus on the liberal traditions of both faiths. Drawing on library research and interviews, Romig is interested in telling the story of progressive currents in Islam and exploring the complementary connections between Islam and Western values.

Lesley Arimah, writer, St. Louis Park, Minn., will travel to Nigeria to conduct personal and academic research to aid in the completion of her novel.

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.

Rebecca Dosch Brown, writer, Minneapolis, will travel to Oakland, Calif., Belle Mead, New Jersey, New York City, Washington D.C., and Baltimore, 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.

Nona Kennedy Carlson, writer, Minneapolis, will travel to Dickinson, Williston, and Watford City, North Dakota, to study the epicenter of the Bakken Oil Boom.

John Colburn, writer, Minneapolis, will travel to Ghent, Belgium, to attend the Fairy Tale Vanguard Conference for research into his current writing projects.

Sarah Fox, writer, Minneapolis, will travel to London, Milwaukee, and Chicago, to research historical medical documents and artifacts at the Royal Society of Medicine and the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries in London, conduct interviews and research for a book-length documentary text combining poetry, memoir and medical science about Diethylstilbestrol (DES), a nonsteroidal estrogen.

Margaret Miles, writer, Minneapolis, will travel to Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Westchester, New York to research aspects of the lives of industrial tycoons John D. Rockefeller and Andrew Carnegie, for an anti-polemical creative nonfiction work-in-progress.

R. Vincent Moniz Jr., writer, Minneapolis, will travel to Milwaukee and Belcourt, North Dakota to attend the Turtle Mountain Writing Workshop and Retreat and the Returning of the Gift Native American Writers Conference.

Cole Perry, writer, Bovey, Minn., will travel to the border between Mexico and the United States, visiting four border cities: Laredo, Texas and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico; El Paso, Texas and Cuidad Juares, Mexico; Tucson, Arizona and Nogales, Mexico; and San Diego, Calif. and Tijuana, Mexico, to investigate the collateral effects of drug-related violence and global apartheid on the migratory communities to create a detailed record of the voices, landscapes, and cities of this nebulous and violent frontier as the basis for a novel.

Nicole Treska, writer, New York City, will drive 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.

www.jeromefdn.org

DANCE
The Dance Panel reviewed 83 applications, 26 from Minnesota, and 57 from New York City. Panelists were Debra Leigh, Lead Organizer for the Community Anti-Racism Education Initiative and former Director of Dance at St. Cloud State University; Ben Pryor, independent arts manager, producer, and curator operating under the moniker tbspMGMT; and Julie Voigt, Senior Program Officer for Performing Arts at Walker Art Center.

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.

Kenna-Camara Cottman, choreographer, Minneapolis, will travel to Pikine, Senegal, West Africa, to investigate Sabar dance culture and the Griot tradition that maintains the artistic culture and creativity of West Africa.

Michel Kouakou, choreographer, Jackson Heights, New York, will travel to Abidjan, Ivory Coast, to study the traditional arts of the Boule Tribe.

Hannah Kramer, choreographer, Minneapolis, will travel to Stolzenhagen, Germany, to attend the P.O.R.C.H. (Ponderosa Ongoing Research and Collaborative Happenings) program at Ponderosa Movement and Discovery, an international improvisation and performance venue.

Paloma McGregor, choreographer, New York City, will travel to St. Croix to conduct ethnographic, archival and physical research that will lead to the development of a new choreographic work.

Kaleena Miller, choreographer, Minneapolis, will travel to Chicago to attend Rhythm World to hone her tap technique, learn new ideas about improvisation, and make connections with tap dancers from around the world.

Darian Parker, choreographer and performer, New York City, will travel to Bamako, Mali, to conduct intensive study of Malian dance — the technical aspects, its accompanying music and the folklore — with master artists to enhance his abilities as a performer and choreographer.

Karen Sherman, choreographer, Minneapolis, will travel to Deer Isle, Maine, to participate in a mixed media craft workshop to research ideas and acquire skills in support of her current dance project, One with Others.

Michéle Steinwald, arts administrator, Minneapolis, will travel to Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, to participate in the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance to deepen her understanding of contemporary dance performance, 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.

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.