Jerome Foundation awards two-year, $40,000 grants to 60 individual artists

Visual artist and curator Dyani White Hawk, based in Minneapolis, is one of 60 artists to win a two-year grant from the Jerome Foundation. (photo by David Ellis)

Sixty artists will receive $40,000 grants from the St. Paul-based Jerome Foundation as part of its new, more flexible fellowship program.

The two-year grants, announced Monday morning, total $3.2 million.

Dancers and choreographers, filmmakers and theater artists, writers and composers nabbed the new awards -- $20,000 a year, plus $10,000 to put toward a nonprofit. The winning artists, whom the foundation describes as "early-career," are based in Minnesota and New York City.

The new Jerome Hill Artist Fellowships program is "designed to be far more flexible in terms of addressing the myriad needs artists have," said Ben Cameron, president of the Jerome Foundation.

The foundation used to offer grants specifically for travel. Or for a clearly-defined project. Now, an artist can use the grant to travel, to study or to create new work.

Artists must account for "every dime they've spent," Cameron said. "It's not without restriction. But it is designed to be much more embracing or wider in terms of what we'd be willing to consider."

The awards represent a shift to artists, versus arts organizations. About 80 percent of the foundation's funding used to go to organizations, with 20 to individual artists. Now, about 60 percent goes to organizations and 40 percent to artists, Cameron said.

About 1,100 artists applied for the grants. More than 80 percent of the artists selected identify as people of color.

The foundation redesigned its fellowships based on artists' responses to a survey in 2016. They requested multi-year grants, explaining that they'd "hardly done work and already you have to be worrying about next year," Cameron said.

Here is a full list of winners:

DANCE
Marjani Forté-Saunders (New York)
Jasmine Hearn (New York)
Raja Feather Kelly (New York)
Pedro Pablo Lander (Minnesota)
Dustin Maxwell (New York)
Leslie Parker (Minnesota)
Ashwini Ramaswamy (Minnesota)
Deneane Richburg (Minnesota)
Darrius Strong (Minnesota)
Andre Zachary (New York)

FILM/NEW MEDIA
Shirley Bruno (New York)
Jason Coyle & Laska Jimsen (Minnesota)
Kerri Edge (New York)
Carrie Hawks (New York)
Adam Khalil & Zack Khalil (New York)
Naomi Ko (Minnesota)
Simon Liu (New York)
Kate Marks (New York)
Kathy McTavish (Minnesota)
Richard Wiebe (Minnesota)

LITERATURE
D. Allen (Minnesota)
Chia-Lun Chang (New York)
Pallavi Dixit (Minnesota)
t'ai freedom ford (New York)
Marwa Helal (New York)
Su Hwang (Minnesota)
Jennifer Kwon Dobbs (Minnesota)
Patricia Park (New York)
Preeti Rajpal (Minnesota)
Alejandro Varela (New York)

THEATER, PERFORMANCE & SPOKEN
WORD
Janani Balasubramanian (New York)
Caridad De La Luz (New York)
Antonio Duke (Minnesota)
Megan Flød Johnson (Minnesota)
Kathryn Haddad (Minnesota)
Joe Horton (Minnesota)
Khary Jackson (Minnesota)
Kareem Lucas (New York)
Ikechukwu Ufomadu (New York)
Nia Witherspoon (New York)

VISUAL ARTS
Manal Abu-Shaheen (New York)
Rachel Breen (Minnesota)
Jes Fan (New York)
LaMont Hamilton (New York)
Jonathan Herrera Soto (Minnesota)
Hasabie Kidanu (New York)
Sieng Lee (Minnesota)
Glendalys Medina (New York)
Ronny Quevedo (New York)
Dyani White Hawk (Minnesota)

MUSIC
Caroline Davis (New York)
Rafael Gonzalez (Minnesota)
deVon Gray (Minnesota)
Jessica Jones (New York)
Tony Jones (New York)
Migiwa Miyajima (New York)
Alicia Hall Moran (New York)
Walken Schweigert (Minnesota)
Dameun Strange (Minnesota)
Mazz Swift (New York)