Friday, November 27, 2015

JENNIE KLEIN/ANNIE/BETH: INTERVIEW ON ART/LIFE WITH LINDA

LINDA M. MONTANO’S ARCHIVE PLUS ART/LIFE  WITH ANNIE AND BETH
Elizabeth Stephens & Annie Sprinkle
Seminal performance artist Linda M. Montano’s archive is for sale. The buyer must insure that her life’s work will be properly preserved so it can be studied and enjoyed by future generations. Several major art institutions have nibbled and it won’t be long before one bites. Take a guided tour of the archive anytime; go to You Tube, search “Linda Mary Montano Archive For Sale.” Linda herself is the tour guide. There are three levels. Level I includes her paper writings, books, reviews and letters. Level 11 includes Level 1 plus her clothing, photo documents, early paintings, and items she used in her every day life, signed as performance art ephemera, as her “life is art.” With Level 111 the archive comes with a two-story building; “The Art/life Institute” in Kingston, New York, an artfully restored bakery, which Linda rebuilt and decorated herself.
At 69 years old, Linda Montano is going strong and her archive continues to grow. During a recent public intervention she spent three days in front of the Empire State Building performing as Mother Teresa of Calcutta where she greeted passers by and spread the love. Montano’s work has always been humanitarian in nature. The sari with the blue trim which she wore, will be added to the archive. These days Montano is a self-described “Catholic Performance Artist,” creating yet another groundbreaking genre of performance art. This is “testimony to my Catholic childhood and need to re-see early roots.”
Montano’s many endurance and durational pieces have strongly influenced contemporary performance art. Her visual art, her teaching, and “life as art” performances have profoundly moved and inspired many. She began doing performance art full time in 1971. Before that she lived in a Roman Catholic convent for two years preparing to be a Maryknoll nun, on a mission to help those in need and “cure leprosy.” When she became severely anorexic she had to leave the convent, and then she discovered that art making was her best medicine for recovery. Thus began her strong connection between art and life, and her conception of “life is art.”
Montano went on to get her MA in sculpture at Villa Schifanoia in Italy, then her MFA at the University of Wisconsin. She lived and worked in San Francisco from 1970 to 1975 and returned often to teach classes and workshops. She lived in a Zen Monastery. Later, she studied for thirty years at the Ananda Ashram with her spiritual teacher, Dr. Ramamurti Mishra. Montano taught performance art at many universities including the San Francisco Art Institute, Bard College, Temple University, Ohio University and University of Texas. Linda Montano has initiated many people into serious art practices and has given permission to others to make art of their life.
A few of Montano’s historic performance pieces are Rope Piece, where she and artist Tehching Hsieh tied themselves together with eight feet of rope between them for one full year during his Art/Life: One Year Performance. They never removed the rope and never touched. She has performed two seven-year-long pieces; 14 Years Of Living Art 1984-1998, where each year of her life was devoted to a different theme and color, and different commitments based on the theology of the seven chakras. During the first seven-year piece, once a month she sat in the window of the New Museum of Contemporary Art in Manhattan, read people’s tarot cards and gave them Art/Life Counseling as art. The lines were continuous and many people reported that the experience changed their lives for the better. Her videos such as Mitchell’s Death and Learning to Talk are part of any respectable history of performance art class and have played in the world’s finest museums and galleries, including the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art. From 1998 To 2005 Montano “experienced” seven years of “Dad Art,” caretaking her sick father who eventually passed away. She states that, “this event was the culmination of my entire practice as an artist.”
Fourteen years ago, Linda Montano put out a public invitation to other artists to utilize her seven-year Living Art performance structure and do their own life’s version of it. This project is titled Another 21 Years of Living Art 1998-2019. Currently 14 other artists are doing her piece incorporating their own unique vision, including an eight-year-old boy in collaboration with his artist mom in Australia. We are fortunate to be part of that group, and the experience has been extraordinary.
ART/LIFE WITH LINDA M. MONTANO
Interview by Elizabeth M. Stephens and Annie M. Sprinkle
Beth: Which do you use, “life as art” or “art as life?” And how did this term get into circulation?
Linda: It is interchangeable and I learned it from Alan Kaprow who studied with Suzuki. I was in San Francisco in the 70’s and was also influenced by Tom Marioni, Terry Fox, Howard Fried, Barbara T. Smith, and Bonnie Sherk who created the FARM. I see ART=LIFE/LIFE=ART as an Asian concept—that the sacredness of life touched everything– that art is indistinguishable from life. That’s why Kaprow along with John Cage and Pauline Oliveros, became enamored of chance operations. They took away the “judging head ” and broke down barriers. Then, moving to San Diego, I continued to be influenced by Pauline and Kaprow and Ellie Antin who taught at UC San Diego as well. Pauline had put her tape recorder on the windowsill and decided to tape everything, listen to everything and compose with that spaciousness….sound=music.
And of course the Women’s Building in Los Angeles, was a giant ART/LIFE experience/experiment.
Beth: So if you think about the work you’ve done and where you have been, what do you think your most important contributions have been to the art world?
Linda: Humor, an ironic twist that pushes things to another level and takes away the kind of seriousness and pomposity that could be a kind of elititism, and birth a world of artists who have gifts and brains that would set them apart from the populous, the people.
Annie: Do you have a favorite work you have produced?
Linda: My favorite “piece” really was taking care of my father. That was a quintessential art life piece. I used my video camera not to make art but to hide behind because of the pain of having to watch him with my own eyes. When I started seeing it as art it was easier to witness, see and transform what was happening. Then later after my Dad died, I made a two-hour movie about him. That was pivotal, because it changed me from what I was before to what I am now. I went back in time, back into my child house, my childhood. Being so near my father, and the intensity of that, I became another person. Humor was my gift in my early work. I see the humor somewhat now, but it’s not a consistent humor. There is something else, and I’m not sure what. Something more real has entered. It’s not that I have given up humor. I just performed as Mother Teresa of Calcutta, which had a twinge of irony because here I am a “dystoniac”(I have cervical dystonia) bent over in spasm, and making believe I’m her. That’s funny, no? There is also something else that is interesting that is happening. In 1970 I sat in front of a video camera for a year and became different characters. Now I’m wanting to become live people. Now I’m wanting to not be make-believe people, but Mother Teresa, Bob Dylan, and Paul McMahon. Before I was Dr. Jane Gooding, and it was fake. Before I was trying to get out of myself and now I’m trying to get nearer to people, to get out of isolation and into intimacy. I will be “you” because I need to share my life. Before it was I’ve gotta get out of my life and be these false people. Also I just finished an essay on this titled “Masks.” See my blog: (HTTP://LINDAMARYMONTANO.BLOGSPOT.COM) I talk about the four levels of consciousness: unconscious, subconscious, conscious and superconscious and I see that I have portrayed all four levels in my persona work: the alcoholic, the professional, the real person(Bob Dylan) and the Guru. It all revolves around accepting all aspects of the self. The neurobiological aspects of rehearsing being another person, changes my brainwaves.
Annie: I adore your humor. Your humor starts in my gut and radiates out my body. It’s not a surface humor that goes inward but a very deep humor that explodes outward. It is spiritually that provides spiritual nourishment.
Linda: Thanks Annie. My grandmother was very funny. She would take her teeth out on holidays and sing. And my mother dressed up on Halloween and went trick or treating.
Beth: My grandmother would take her teeth out too! It was very funny, and very scary. What do you think is the highest form of life-art?
Linda: Anything that creates an ecstasy in the artist; where there is a suspension of time, of judgment. Suspension. There’s a riding the wave of ecstasy when everyone is on the same page. No one is dragging the rudder of judgment or disbelief. It is when the artist is in the state of creation… Or when the artist is co-creating with other ARTISTS/LIFEISTS and they are riding the same train in the same manner and don’t care about time or space. In Catholicism it is called The Mystical Body of Christ. In life, it is ecstasy.
Annie: Are you proud to be an artist?
Linda: I’m very, very happy that I was chosen. I don’t think you choose. The universe chooses people. I am honored to be chosen to be an artist. I don’t think I have anything to do with it.
Beth: What’s the most fun you have had making art?
Linda: I love being different personas, I love being other people. The first time I was Mother Teresa I blew myself away. Me blowing me! And that is so correct because we think… is this blowing the audience away? No, that is the wrong thinking. We have to blow ourselves into ecstasy. When I was studying sculpture in Italy, I dropped the idea of being a studio artist. I collected Italian found objects , audience members picked up an object (according to numbers) which they individually assembled and make a sculpture. That was the beginning of my liberation. Another one happened when my college teacher and mentor, Mother Mary Jane at the College of New Rochelle, gave me “art-wings” and I made a group ceramic mural on a public wall in 1965. Oh yes, freedom for sure.
Annie: You’ve been using recycled materials for a LONG time. Would you say you’ve been in the environmental art movement?
Linda: I think it’s more that I learned thrift, a frugality and a respect for matter from my family. I remember my dad drawing one bowl of water to wash in the morning; everything was done with this one bowl of “sacred” water. Our life was very monastic. My grandmother recycled everything and had a whole album full of condensed milk cows cut from labels. Yeah, recycling is natural to some people because they grew up that way. And then it becomes a movement like Art Povera or Eco-art.
Poverty, war, recessions, depression, a non-consumerist ethos allows for a neo environmental-green that is now au courant.
Beth: Is there such a thing as a failed art project in art/life?
LINDA: We must always think about consequences even though we are these freedom-fighting-geniuses called artists. I would say, as a cautionary word, that the beauty of our calling as artists is to see beyond; we must be the creator, beyond limits, and regulations, and beyond consequences. And yet in the world of reality there ARE consequences. That’s the paradox and makes some of us want to stay in the cave. It takes time and wisdom, and it takes stumblings, and those kinds of haphazard and consequential mistakes to realize that first flush of, oh, I’m going to do this and its going to be fabulous, without thinking of the consequences. Horribleness happens. It is part of the game. But as I age, I can take less and less of it as my stress level seizes me up. Honestly I’m quite content sitting in the kick back chair and watching Entertainment Tonight re-runs. Its good ART/LIFE for me and I am failure-free!!
Beth: So do you think there is such a thing as failure, or is it just part of the process of becoming an artist, and an adult?
Linda: I think that there are no mistakes because there is reality in both. It is “What can I stomach?” I just wrote a “hell” poem inspired from my college days studying the Divine Comedy. My version is composed of layers of hell with exclamations of pain. The poem is titled ENTER (see blog). It is about serial failures and it was so cleansing to write. Failure as art. Exorcising the dark….
Beth: Can you talk about being a Catholic performance artist Linda?
Linda: In these complex times of recessive recessions, downsized possessions, boundaried vacations, medical quarantines, folded funding, foreclosed dreams, I decided or felt called to Become a Catholic Again! It is an exciting return and also has its own challenges. Being a Catholic artist is very new for me, about 10 years old. It came from teaching at the university because there, I had “art children” and I didn’t know how to be an “art mother”. I had been a gig-er before that. I went to gigs in different cities/countries, did my thing and left. No consequences, no muss, no fuss. But teaching for seven years with a group of young people at the same place was a whole other ball game. I had to be a moral compass and protector of their physical/psychological/spiritual safety. Not having had children, I had no idea how to do that so there were times when there were flower-child-art-students, running aesthetically in the halls and a whole lot of performative incredibleness happening that Linda-art loved but Linda-teacher had no idea how to decipher. I went to the Church to get help!
Beth: If you had a young student now that wanted to do life art what advice would you give?
Annie: I’d say ‘call Linda Montano because she’s the best art mother there is.’
Linda: Annie, you are always so generous and supportive of me, and I tear-up with it always… What would I say? Don’t be scared, yet be careful. I’m watching an extremely ill friend who is in her sixties. She had a stroke. Kathy Brew and I were standing next to her bed. She was in critical care. We sang to each other, because we were both feeling the same thing, “What’s it all about Alfie?” And I guess we both agreed that it doesn’t matter how long that resume is when it comes down to the deathbed and final breath. I think I’m coming to that kind of realization which time and age reveal… How to illustrate this? I think when people begin aging and see other people age and when things change so drastically, like my father’s illness, and then returning to Catholicism, having a medical issue where I’m so health focused… I think priorities change.
Can I now be as spicy, and as loyal to the image, to my students, to the video, to the performance, to my brilliance, or to the painting as Georgia O’Keefe was in an interview of her I saw when she was ninety-two. She looked as sharp and committed and focused on being an artist… just like a rattlesnake watching her prey ….and this I could see as she was getting out of her car, going up into the woods on her way to paint New Mexico sunsets. I want to bull dog my way to the end and hang on to the bone of my art and life in a dignified, totally comical, graceful, divinely directed and correct way just like Georgia. Fate might deal me a different strategy. Thanks to my belief-system, it is all, no matter what, wonderful art and a wonderful life.
Beth: Do you think your work is interventionist art? And what do you think that term means?
Linda: There are programs on some of the 400,000 TV programs I watch a week that are about interventions for drugs, alcohol, etc. I think intervention is about: speaking the difficult. Artists really hang out in the difficult, are obliged to communicate the difficult.
Annie: How do you feel like feminism and religion have interacted with your work?
Linda: Feminism is a word that I really don’t apply to myself and I feel really quite inept in this journey I’m on with this Catholic position. Sometimes its working and I’m pretty happy with it and other times not. For example, I go to the jail on Sundays and do a Catholic service there. There is one guard, a man, who likes telling anti-Catholic jokes. There are two other women there and they just listen to the jokes and laugh. They’re more mature than I am. Last time he said he had a new joke. I said, ‘Is it a Catholic joke? Because if it is, I’m leaving.’ And I left. I don’t like the way I did it. I’m proud that I left, but I wish I had done it with more creativity, with humor. With ART! Creativity is the ticket. How to get out of situations or into situations that are more nourishing because I ended up winning in my own eyes, and I don’t want to do that any more. Loving is winning because when l look at a friend on her deathbed…who cares who’s winning. Who cares? There’s just one less person at MY funeral when I’m so intent on winning!
Annie: In terms of your art life practice what are you current commitments/projects now? Didn’t you take a vow to not write for a year?
Linda: The writing commitment is up 2012. It was for seven years. I was going to wear orange forever, and that is getting really mushy. I have a lot of orange clothes but I slip in browns and purples and reds. But as I said before, I’m more focused on compiling, completing, concluding the past, and bringing it into some sort of crescendo/conclusion. That was why I took this no-writing vow. I wanted to cure myself of greedily creating as if I were an art addict and not a lover of truth. Artaholics are not necessary.
Beth: Could you talk about the current group that Annie and I are participating in with you? There are about ten other artists using your Seven Years of Life as Art and seven-chakra structure. Are you glad you made the call for people to join you in using your structure? Is this maybe a strategy for a longer project? What’s it like collaborating with people? What is your response to having this project?
Linda: As far as 21 Years of Living Art is concerned, every 7 years, artists “do their 7 year thing” under the auspices of this school that I founded because I truly love endurance and I wanted to share my love with others. One day I see my thinking about what people are doing in this school as ecumenical-offerings which are not quite Roman Catholic but certainly are spiritual (not religious), and then the next day I want to hide and feel as if I am uncomfortably pushing my boundaries of Catholic belief. Yes, that says it, my boundaries of belief. So right now the school is a wonderful mix of geniuses who are forcing me into deciding whether I’m going to be a fundamentalist finger wagging Catholic church woman via SNL, or if I am there to encourage creativity.
Beth: Here’s a question from our editor, Roxi Hamilton, “How do you feel that ritual and longevity, like 7-year performance cycles, intervene in and shape our conceptions of how art affects life?”
Linda: I want her to answer that one!
Beth: Here’s another one from Roxi., “ How do you regard your extension of ancestry, and that’s borrowing appropriating and extending your 7-year chakra paradigm and whether the 7-year performances should be repeatedly reconceptualized by other artists?”
Linda: I think it’s in the culture anyway. I think that performance art has a way of infecting culture, and then reappearing. It’s already happening, and it’s happened. A lot of it is because the computer has squashed and trumped time, and is preparing us for robotization and intellectual piracy. These attempts of these interventionist artists to speak to, and hold on to time is really an Armageddon-like attempt to point towards a loss via the machine. Endurance is a response to the information age. Endurance is availability. Endurance is staying the course. Endurance gives us a taste of solidity that is being lost to floating avatarily in SECOND LIFE.
Beth: One more question from Roxi. “Your personal spiritual, and artistic vocabulary seems to be composed of a hybrid of mostly Catholic but also Indian influences, the guru, the chakras, etc. Can you comment on the significance of combining your own childhood religion with the language and practice of other cultures?”
Linda: It can only be a richer meal.
Beth: Anything else you would like to say?
Linda: Buy my archive so I can simplify. lindamontano@hotmail.com See it on You Tube. Its called “Archive for Sale.” I’m giving a finder’s fee for the best price.
Annie: Who would the ideal buyer be?
Linda: The Getty, NYU, Bard, An International Institute? See Part 4 of the video and find a place. Fast. Anywhere that the Archive can be used for research would be good. I’m really putting effort into putting my papers, books, videos and objects in order. I’m becoming an archivist. Does that mean I’m now a librarian? Not another persona, please! The best scenario is if somebody bought the Kingston “Art/Life Institute” and kept the archive there and used it as a study center, a performance center. That would be perfect!
Annie: I’d give anything to see that happen.
Beth: That’s really exciting.
Linda: ART LIVES!!!!!!!!!!
We highly encourage you to contact Linda Mary Montano for Art/Life/Laughter Counseling. Or gather her unique wisdom from her three books: Art In Everyday Life, Performance Artists Speaking In the 80’s, Letters from Linda M. Montano. Invite her to do lectures, workshops, and performances in your city. Visit her web site at lindmontano.com. If you are interested in acquiring her amazing archive, contact her at lindamontano@hotmail.com. Buy it and donate it to NYU or find a rich uncle who needs a tax write off and let him buy it, then donate it to NYU. Your finder’s fee is a day tied to Linda with love.

CANDICES MEMORIAL SERVICE

FOR CANDICE'S  MEMORIAL SERVICE:




DEAR CLUB 90,

I had all good intentions of attending CANDICE'S LIFE CELEBRATION this coming Sunday.

Then just a few weeks ago, I learned that it is the same day of the christening of my brother's grandson who I am very close to. He was born with a club foot and has had  had it wrapped in plaster for months as a newborn plus was just operated on his Achilles tendon already and is soon to go to Michigan for special treatment. The foot has sores from the plaster casts and it is all very delicate and absorbing for me.

His name is Warren( I know but it isn't my child) and I was so challenged to be  between these two very very important and close to my  heart experiences. So I "asked" Candice what to do and she "said" for me to go to the christening. Honest to God and not lying.....

I have left here something that I am asking Jane to offer ONLY IF ALL OF YOU CALL FOR IT AT THE TIME OR IF YOU DECIDE BEFORE NOT TO USE IT THEN KNOW IT IS TOTALLY FINE WITH ME.

So Jane, thanks if you do it and thanks to all if it doesn't fit the energy of the night.

Love,
Linda

INTRODUCTION FOR SPRINKLE-STEPHENS BOOK


FOR ANNIE SPRINKLE/BETH STEPHENS BOOK  THE INTRODUCTION:










                                       
            
    
               


   
 
 THE GLANDS AND CHAKRAS ARE GRATEFUL TO ANNIE AND BETH:

1. CHAKRA 1: MULADHARA. GLAND 1: OVARIES/TESTES. INTIMACY. ANNIE & BETH: Gratitude to you both! There are now 455,072,324 young, old, straight, bi, transgender and celibate folks who comfortably and  ecstatically celebrate their sensuality because of you and in doing so they generate more love for this hungry/hurting planet.

2. CHAKRA 2: SVADHISTHANA. GLAND 2: PANCREAS. MONEY. BETH & ANNIE: Gratitude to you both! As penultimate earth stewards you both fearlessly generate props, costumes, magical objects and millions of glittery accoutrements which transform environments and with gusto and without shyness, you seek funding to finance these spectacles that ritually/positively change group consciousness.

3. CHAKRA 3: MANIPURA. GLAND 3: ADRENALS. COURAGE. ANNIE & BETH: Gratitude to you both! Prophets have no limits and your aesthetic message that everyone and everything has a soul has allowed you to fearlessly, courageously and radically do everything possible to protect all souls.

4. CHAKRA 4: ANAHATA. GLAND 4: THYMUS. LOVE. BETH & ANNIE: Gratitude to you both! You have performed enough autobiographical work so that you both feel healed enough to become  BIGGER than your individual selves and now you can focus on the earth as a living, organic being in need of attention, transformation and performative respect.

5. CHAKRA 5: VISHUDDHA. GLAND 5: THYROID. COMMUNICATION. ANNIE & BETH: Gratitude to you both! You walk your talk in simple inclusivity. It is obvious that both of you are secret, private, hidden intellectuals who easily speak the language of the academy, but you both insist on connecting/speaking with and not AT all so that the message and people benefit. What a wonderful strategy for ACTIVISTIS of LOVE who side-step away from power and fame so that the earth/others can shine.

6. CHAKRA 6: AJNA. GLAND 6: PINEAL: INTUITION. BETH & ANNIE: Gratitude to you both!  You see what needs to be done and seed your vision to pioneer a path that will positively change the ENTIRE universe.

7. CHAKRA 7: SAHASRARA. GLAND 7: PITUITARY. JOY. ANNIE & BETH. Gratitude to you both! Keep leading us into the waters so we splash around again like we did before. Keep leading us to non-judgmental collaborations. Keep leading us to the information that opens our minds to the real truth. Keep leading us to healthy ways to convert pain/evil/distress into fabulous flowers of beauty and light. Keep leading us back to the GARDEN.

Linda Mary Montano, Saugerties  2015.


           

INTERVIEW NOT USED FOR ANNIE-BETH NEW BOOK

BEGINNING OF INTERVIEW NOT USED FOR  ANNIE SPRINKLE/BETH STEPHES NEW BOOK


JENNIE KLEIN: Annie and Beth have asked you to write the forward for this book because the seven years of weddings and sexecology/ecosexuality developed from their relationship with your canonical durational works Seven Years of Living Art and Fourteen Years of Living Art. You are an Art Saint and a mentor for much of their work. Can you begin by telling the readers how you met Annie and Beth. and what your relationship has been with them over the years?
 
LINDA MARY MONTANO:  I will ask Annie and Beth directly. Annie and Beth, in very few words, please answer this question from Jennie about how we met. That way I am assured accuracy and memory reliability.
 
ANNIE SPRINKLE: When Veronica Vera and I saw a flyer in the bathroom at Franklin Furnace for Linda Montano’s summer saint camp we applied immediately. I had learned about Linda in my History of Performance Art class at School of Visual Arts and resonated with her work. Linda liked our application and came to meet with us at Veronica’s apartment in Manhattan and we were accepted to spend a week with Linda at her Art/Life Institute in Kingston. We explored one chakra a day for seven days. The week was absolutely life changing, life enhancing, and a pivotal experience. As I had been working for a long time in the mainstream sex industry, I was ready to move on. My dream was to be an artist, so Linda baptized me an artist, and in those moments I became one. I’m eternally grateful for all the guidance Linda has given me ever since. She is truly the lighthouse to my bobbing and rocking art/life ship. 
 
BETH STEPHENS:
We first met in 2002 when I was performing my cross county performance called Wish You Were Here. I had just recently started going out with Annie and we’d had some really fun dates in California. She had a gig in New York, so I drove an old VW Van cross country and met up with her in Manhattan. She joined me for the Northeast part of my road trip project. On the way to Palmyra, NY to do a performance where Mormonism started, we stopped by your Art/Life Institute in Kingston. Somehow a lot of Annie’s porn-star friends were there too, maybe it was a Club 90 meeting. Whatever it was it was wonderful to meet you in your natural habitat surrounded by sexy, sexy people. Yes, That is how we first met.
 
 
JENNIE  KLEIN: What has been your relationship with them over the years?
LMM: They are adopted family first of all. And sometimes LIFE becomes the relationship, a place where Annie, Beth and I  exchange information about challenges and issues and feelings. As a result we have developed a wonderful transparency and ability to practice Non-Violent Communication. To me that is the higher art, LIFE that is, and thankfully we are friends enough to do that! We also exchange colleague info and gig info and how to exchange money in Europe info.
                 



             
JENNIE KLEIN: Linda could you talk about the centrality of the chakras for your performance work during that time?
LMM: I has just begun 14 YEARS OF LIVING ART, a self designed Chakra experience,  and so I was hot and heavy in the process/practice when Annie and I first met.  I definitely remember that she came to Summer Saint Camp at THE ART/LIFE INSTITUTE in the yellow year, the year of the adrenals and courage. The "camp"  was a way  to share my information with others artists who came once a year for  two weeks to play-work with me upstate. Besides all of the other Chakra disciplines that I did (wearing one color clothes, listening to one sound for hours a day, staying in a colored room  for hours a day,)  I also met with people for 7 years once a month in NYC at the New Museum for Art/Life Counseling. At the  Summer Saint Camp, we processed and workshopped  intensely and were in the learning stages of this chakra experience. I couldn't do it that hard now if you paid me, but then again that was 1987 when Annie and I and Veronica Vera explored art-life for two weeks. And it is now 2015, 28 years later.
 In 2002, 14 YEARS OF LIVING ART was over but I had extended  it by sharing it in a performance titled: ANOTHER 21 YEARS OF LIVING ART, a non-academic art-life "school,"  based on the 7 chakra map. Beth and I met during the first 7 years of that institute.

JENNIE KLEIN: Could the three of you talk about your subsequent collaborative work?
LMM: Annie truly initiated me into my beauty-goddess self via her photos of me which the whole world should see because I'm ready for her to share them now that I'm 73. They are persona studies with costumes, professional make-up and Annie's artistry.
I also co-taught with Annie and Barbara Carrellas  for some years during their SACRED SEX workshops and have vibrant memories of  breathing and chocolate and sounds emanating from an extremely small upstate NY bungalow with 25 heaving and huffing and puffing and ecstatic women, all loving together. Thank you Annie for that.
And The Green Wedding at Beth's UCSC was a Felliniesque feat of production/costume/administrative magic that this dynamic duo not only "performed " once but I think 18 times.


                                               

NOTES FROM ST FRANCIS HOUSE OF HOSPITALITY

NOTES  FROM ST  FRANCIS  HOUSE NEW LONDON CONN: NOVEMBER 2015 LINDA MARY MONTANO
MY SPIRITUAL LIFE:
I AM IN MY 70'S AND HAVE BEEN SPIRITUALLY INFLUENCED BY MY TWO YEARS AS A MARYKNOLL NOVICE IN A CONVENT; MY 19 YEARS OF ADOPTION BY 2 AYRUVEDIC JAIN DOCTORS, A HUSBAND  AND WIFE FROM INDIA, THE MEHTAS; MY 40 YEARS STUDY OF YOGA; MY 2 YEARS LIVING IN INTENSE MEDITATION IN A ZEN MONASTERY; MY 7 YEARS STUDYING TIBETAN BUDDHISM; AND SINCE  1991 A RETURN TO A FLEDGING PRACTICE OF CATHOLICISM.
WHY THE RETURN? AFTER HAVING TAKEN A 7 YEAR JOB AS A COLLEGE PROFESSOR AND NOT KNOWING HOW TO BE A  MODEL OF JUSTICE TO THEM, I STARTED RE-RESEARCHING THE CATHOLIC CHURCH... NOT THE RULES AND REGULATIONS BUT  WAYS TO MODEL GOODNESS.
ANOTHER REASON FOR MY RETURN TO THE RELIGION OF MY BIRTH, IS BECAUSE I WAS TAKING CARE OF MY CONTEMPLATIVE FATHER FOR 7 YEARS AND AFTER THAT I REALLY CAME BACK WITH A NEW MIND, A NEW CURIOSITY, A NEW PERMISSION TO BE THE PRIEST THAT I ALWAYS WANTED TO BE.
AND YES , I MUST ADD, THAT AFTER ONE DAY AT THE "SCHOOL" OF ST FRANCIS HOUSE IN NEW LONDON, I LEAVE WITH THE MISSIING SPIRITUAL PIECE OF THE PUZZLE......TO FEED THE HUNGRY, INCLUDING MY (ANOREXIC) SELF.

MY ART LIFE:

MY ART HAS BEEN A METICULOUS MEDICINE AND CURE FOR MY ISSUES, CONCERNS, FEARS AND BROKEN-NESS. MY ART HAS HEALED ME BY PROVIDING ME AN AESTHETIC COMMUNITY CALLED, AUDIENCE. I DONT LIVE WITH THIS COMMUNITY BUT I GATHER THEM WHEN I NEED SUPPORT AND LOVE. THEY BECOME MY DOCTORS, THERAPISTS AND LOVERS: WITNESSES OF MY JOURNEY. MY JOB AS AN ARTIST IS TO CREATE A PERFORMANCE, A VIDEO, A BOOK, A CLASS WHICH INSPIRES THE VIEWER TO GIVE ME ATTENTION AND IN THE EXCHANGE, I GIVE THE AUDIENCE MY ART AND THEN THEY LOVE ME; AND THEN I LEARN TO LOVE ME; AND THEN I CAN LIVE WITHOUT THE AUDIENCE BECAUSE THE DOOR TO THE HEART CHAPEL OF LOVE HAS BEEN OPENED; AND THEN AND NOW, I CAN BEGIN TO STUDY LOVE ITSELF.
 SO THE WORK HAD GROWN OVER 50 YEARS FROM:
1. MY PAIN
2. AUDIENCE VIEWING MY PAIN
3. MY BEING SUPPORTED BY THE AUDIENCE'S SUPPORT AND WITNESSING
4. MY GROWTH INTO FINDING WAYS TO PRACTICE COMPASSION AND SHARE THAT WITH OTHERS.
5. GRADUATING FROM ART AND LIFE ITSELF AND INSTEAD OF ASKING PEOPLE TO WITNESS ME BEING CREATIVE OR FUNNY OR INSPIRING, I HAVE EVOLVED TO MY CURRENT PERFORMANCE TITLED:  MEET A BLACK MADONNA WHICH HAPPENS IN MY HOME, THE TRANSFIGURATION HOSPITAL AND CHAPEL. IT LOOKS SOMETHING LIKE THIS:
PEOPLE COME AND LAY ON THE FLOOR WITH ME IN FRONT OF MARY AND WE LOVE HER AND IN THAT PRACTICE,  WE HEAL TOGETHER. IT HAS STOPPED BEING ABOUT ME.
EVENTUALLY AND WITH PRAYER, I HOPE TO INCORPORATE SHARING A MEAL WITH MY VISITING GUESTS VIA ST FRANCIS HOUSE'S MENTORSHIP AND EXAMPLE.

MY CHRIST CONSCIOUSNESS

IN THE 90'S, I MET THE FOUNDER OF CENTERING PRAYER, FATHER THOMAS KEATING, AT ONE OF HIS LECTURES. HE GRANTED  INTERVIEWS TO US AND  IN OUR MEETING, I TOLD HIM THAT I HAD WRITTEN A BOOK TITLED , ART IN EVERYDAY LIFE. HIS RESPONSE WAS SLOW, SONOROUS, NON-JUDGMENTAL AND IN A LIMINAL/ LISTENING VOICE HE SAID SOMETHING LIKE THIS: " WHY NOT TITLE IT GOD IN EVERYDAY LIFE?

 I WENT SILENT AND BLANK AT THAT TIME. AND YET I FIND MYSELF SLIDING SLOWLY AND SWEETLY TOWARD HIS SUGGESTION.....LETTING ART DETHRONE ITSELF AND TRADING IT IN FOR THE DIVINE COMEDY, NOT MINE.
 MAYBE A SNACK WILL BE  INCLUDED!!
ST FRANCIS HOUSE, 2015

73 YEAR OLD SENIOR CITIZEN RANT: WHY NOT TO ORDER A DOSA AT ---------


WHY  NOT TO ORDER A DOSA




WHY NOT TO ORDER A MASALA DOSA OR ANY DOSA AT ----------IF U HAVE HAD THEM IN INDIA OR NYC

1. GREASY "PANCAKE"

2. PANCAKE TOUGH  AND TOO CHEWY

3. PANCAKE SO SMALL AND STILL IT WAS NOT FILLED WITH POTATOES SO THAT THE TRICK OF SCARITY COULD NOT BE  DISGUISED.  SMALL DOSA AND  2 TABLESPOONS OF LONELY POTATOES IN IT.

4. THEY MIGHT BRING U THE NOT SO GREAT "SOUP"  IN A SMALL SIZED  "COFFEE" CUP, MIGHT NOT. U HAVE TO REMIND THEM EVENTHOUGH U HAVE ALMOST FINISHED THE 5 BITES OF YOUR  MINI-DOSA.

5. THE COCONUT CHUTNEY IS A NICE FLAVOR EVEN THOUGH IT WAS SCARCE AND IN A SMALL EYE-CUP SIZE CONTAINER.  MINE WAS STILL FROZEN.

6. SAVE THE MONEY YOU SPEND ON YOUR ------- DOSA, ( MUCH TOO MUCH)  AND SPEND IT FOR A DOSA IN QUEENS WHERE THERE ARE MANY PLACES TO BUY A DOSA.  YOU WILL FIND THE REAL THING THERE.

7.  AND, OH YES, FORGOT.  THE SERVICE WAS NOT SERVICE.

MICHAEL PARKES, "CONTRACT"

MICHAEL PARKES:  "CONTRACT"




"Hi ___________

Pursuant to the conversation we just had (over the phone, in person at_____, via chat on_____)
I just wanted to get confirmation in writing of the details we discussed:

________ agrees to pay Linda $_______ for (performance, supplies, food and housing)
upon completion of (my performance, my workshop, my residency, my______)

________ agrees to pay in full within 30 days from submission of (bill, receipts bill and receipts)

All communication/bills regarding this transaction will occur over email.

If applicable Linda will supply receipts via (email, photocopy, scan, or actual receipts)

Can you please respond to this email so that we have a written confirmation of this agreement.

Thanks so much!

Linda"

MONEY IS GREEN TOO MANIFESTO





     




                                   
               
            

MONEY IS GREEN TOO MANIFESTO

1. ALMOST ALL MONEY IS PAPER. THINK TWICE BEFORE CREATING A WAY TO SPEND MORE&MORE MONEY BECAUSE THEN YOU COMPROMISE A TREE.

2. SOME MONEY IS IN THE FORM OF PLASTIC CARDS. THINK TWICE BEFORE CREATING A PERSONAL NEED TO HAVE MORE TOXIC PLASTIC  IN YOUR LIFE.

3. CREDIT CARDS ARE TO BE SEEN AS EQUIVALENCIES. THAT IS, IF WHAT IS VISUALIZED INSIDE THE CARD AS A REAL ASSET IS TRULY THERE, THEN USE THE CARD. IF WHAT IS VISUALIZED INSIDE THE CARD IS A PROBABILITY, THEN DON'T USE THE CARD.

4. MONETARILY DO UNTO OTHERS AS WAS DONE BY OUR GRANDFATHERS. THAT IS, OUR FATHERS AND GRANDFATHERS SPENT ONLY WHAT THEY HAD. FOLLOW THEIR EXAMPLE.  IF YOU DON'T HAVE IT, DON'T SPEND IT.

5. DO UNTO OTHERS AS YOU WANT DONE UNTO YOU. BEFORE YOU MAX OUT A CARD, THINK OF THE TRIED AND TRUE AMERICAN WORKING THREE JOBS TO PAY OFF YOUR MONETARY EXCESSES. SPEND THREE MINUTES A DAY BEING SOMEBODY ELSE. THAT IS, BE THIS PERSON WITH 3 JOBS IN YOUR IMAGINATION AND THEN DECIDE WHAT TO DO.

6. THE GOVERNMENT IS HYPNOTIZING US TO BE FINANCIALLY CARELESS, EXCESSIVE AND IRRESPONSIBLE. IT IS A PLOY AND WAY FOR THEM TO THEN DO A POLITICAL INTERVENTION AND PUNISHMENT THAT HAS CONSEQUENCES THAT ARE TO BE FEARED.

7. "I WILL MAX OUT MY CARD BECAUSE I'M TERMINALLY ILL"  IS A MONEY SIN AKIN TO ANYTHING YOU MIGHT CONSIDER A SIN IN YOUR INDIVIDUAL CONSCIENCE. WHY? BECAUSE SOMEBODY'S HARD WORKING BROTHER WILL HAVE TO EVENTUALLY PAY FOR YOUR DEBTS.

8. BANKRUPTCY IS THE INQUISITION OF THE MIDDLE CLASS: THE "WORKER"  TAKES UP THE SLACK OF THE "WANTER".

9. DO ONLY WHAT YOU CAN AFFORD.

10. WANT ONLY WHAT YOU CAN AFFORD. IF YOU HAVE ENOUGH MONEY AND HAVE BECOME AN ADDICTED WANTER, THEN ASK, WHY WANT?

11. TRANSLATED, THAT SAYS: ASK, WHY DO I WANT WHAT I HAVE BEEN HYPNOTIZED TO WANT?

12. STOP IMAGINING YOU HAVE MONEY WHEN YOU DON'T. IF YOU DON'T HAVE MONEY, GET A JOB AND LIVE IN A WAY THAT SUPPORTS YOU, NOT A WAY THAT SUPPORTS A HABIT THAT IS AN ELITIST AFFRONT TO YOUR SOUL.

13. MONEY IS ONE OF LIFE'S TABOOS LIKE SEX, DEATH. MONEY IS IN THE PROCESS OF BEING DE-TABOOED, BUT IS NOW AT THE LAUGHINGSTOCK/FOOL STAGE OF DE-CONSTRUCTION.  BY TAKING MONEY SERIOUSLY, IT WILL BE RE-INSTATED TO ITS PREVIOUS POSITION OF RESPECT/ KIND-CARE AND WILL HAVE SURVIVED THE TEST OF TABOO.

14. ASK: ARE LOVE AND MONEY OXYMORONONIC OR CONGRUENT? WHAT ABOUT COMMODIFIED/SATISFIED? SUSTAINABLE/WASTEFUL? BARTER/BUY? GENEROUS/HOARDING?

15. THERE ARE 867,000 WAYS OF INTERPRETING POVERTY/LIVING WITHIN YOUR MEANS. RESEARCH THE TOPIC.

16. THANK YOUR HIGHER POWER FOR THE INVISIBLE RICHES IN LIFE, NOT THE ONES THAT CAN BE BOUGHT.

LINDA MARY MONTANO,  MAY 21, 2011

 
LINDA MARY MONTANO
THE ART/LIFE INSTITUTE

9 JOHN ST
SAUGERTIES , N.Y. 12477
845-246-4482

Saturday, November 7, 2015

RE-POST: THE CHICKEN CLUB






THE CHICKEN CLUB


 IT IS SCIENTIFICALLY PROVEN THAT ONE OF THE ONCE HUGE DINOSAURS WAS A PRECURSOR OF THE MODERN CHICKEN . IF YOU WANT TO VERIFY THIS, CHECK IT OUT ON WIKIPEDIA .

SO THE NEGATIVE BULLYING CRY OF, "DONT BE CHICKEN ," IS TOTALLY INACCURATE AND NOT TO BE  LISTENED TO OR BELIEVED. THESE ONCE HUMONGOUS MIGHTY CREATURES ARE NOW THE MOST HUMBLE,  FOCUSED AND FAITHFUL TO TASK SENTIENT BEINGS ON THIS EARTH, PAYING ATTENTION TO NOW/THE PRESENT MOMENT IN  A WAY EVEN THE MOST DEDICATED MEDITATOR WOULD WISH FOR HERSELF.

WHY ARE WE DRESSED AND APPEAR AS FAUX-CHICKENS?  BECAUSE WE WANT TO  HONOR ALL CHICKENS BY JOINING THE CLUB OF THOSE WILLING TO DON  THEIR OWN UNIQUE VERSION OF APPAREL INDICATIVE OF CHICKENHOOD, THAT IS, THOSE WILLING TO WEAR WINGS THAT ARE INOPERATIVE AND CLOTHES THAT ARE COLORED TO RESEMBLE THE ATTRACTIVE PLUMAGE OF THIS NOBLE BEAST.

TIMES FOR APPEARANCES CAN BE FOR 3 DAYS, 3 HOURS A DAY,  3 YEARS, 30 YEARS.  YOUR CHOICE. YOU MAY SIT, WALK OR STAND BUT WITH ATTENTION TO THE DIGNITY OF OUR FOCUSED AND INTENSE TASK OF ATTENDING TO THE MOMENT.

OUR ACTIONS WILL BE TO APPEAR IN PUBLIC WITH OUR WINGS THAT FLUTTER BUT DO NOT CARRY US UPWARD AND IN DOING SO, EFFECTING THE SYMBOLIC CONSCIOUSNESS OF ONLOOKERS WHO MIGHT QUESTION OUR ACTION. ARE WE ANGELS?  NO. ARE WE REALLY CHICKENS, NO.  WE ARE INSPIRED BY CHICKENS AND SHARE OUR INSPIRATION BECAUSE WE WANT TO SPEARD THE MESSAGE OF COURAGE TO ALL.

AND WHEN QUESTIONED, OUR ONLY RESPONSE WILL BE, " DON'T BE AFRAID."

THERE ARE NO FEES COLLECTED TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS CLUB'S ACTIVITIES.

CLUCK, CLUCK.

LINDA MARY MONTANO 2015

NEW INTRO FOR ST FRANCIS HOUSE, NEW LONDON CONN





     


                                         
        NEW INTRO FOR ST FRANCIS HOUSE , NEW LONDON CONN           
        

IT IS WITH HEARTFELT JOY THAT I VISIT YOUR ST FRANCIS HOUSE OF HOSPITALITY AND I WISH TO THANK ALL OF YOU FOR YOUR CARE AND FOR MENTORING THE CORPORAL AND SPIRITUAL WORKS OF MERCY. I WAS PLANNING ON COMING HERE LAST YEAR AND WROTE THEN ABOUT MY CONCERN WHICH WAS AGING AND I QUOTE,
"As we age, we gather more and more information and it takes us longer to retrieve facts and longer to cross reference neurocortexed details from physical memories, psychological memories, moral memories, factual memories and spiritual memories. As a result of this multi level firing of information packets stored in our past experiences, we slow down to retrieve and let our wiring do it's job. This is not a bad thing but is often seen as a misdemeanor and sign of wrong, wrong, and more wrong. And the worst case scenario is that fear and trembling set in, the adrenal glands do the fight-flight dance and memory stalls to a halt. Permission to be slow, to walk slow, to think slow, to eat slow, to talk slow is a great cure for that. Slow life, I salute you."

AT THAT TIME I WAS FINDING A WAY TO TALK ABOUT AGING IN MY WORK BY SHARING MY CHRONIC DYSTONIA, A NEUROLOGICAL CONDITION WHICH WAS SLOWING ME DOWN. ONE DAY, WHILE BENT OVER WITH SPASMS FROM DYSTONIA I HEARD INTERNALLY, "LINDA, YOU LOOK JUST LIKE MOTHER TERESA, ALL BENT OVER AND CRIPPLED AND SLOW." I KNEW I HAD A SOLUTION TO THAT PROBLEM, WHICH IS TO MAKE ART ABOUT THE PROBLEM, SO I BEGAN PERFORMING AS MOTHER. SO I HAD THE COSTUME AND WAS ALL READY SO THAT WHEN THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING REFUSED TO TURN THEIR LIGHTS TO BLUE AND WHITE FOR HER 100TH BIRTHDAY ALTHOUGHT THEY DID MAKE THE LIGHTS YELLOW FOR SPONGE BOB, I HEARD ANOTHER INNER PROMPT THAT SAID, "LINDA, GO TO NY AS MOTHER TERESA AND PROTEST THEIR DECISION." IT WAS AN ACT OF SOMETHING: RISISTANCE? REGRET? ALL I KNOW IS THAT IT FELT REAL AND CORRECT.

MY WORK IN GENERAL HAS BEEN ABOUT MY AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL NEED TO HEAL MYSELF AND OVER TIME, HOPEFULLY THIS WAY HAS PREPARED ME FOR BEING ABLE TO ASSIST OTHERS AND NOT JUST MYSELF. WHAT I FIND IS THAT I HAVE TO PERFORM THE WORKS OF MERCY ON ME SO AS TO HEAL MYSELF OF PTSD AND TRAUMA AND IN DOING SO, MY WORK HAS BECOME SOMEWHAT OF AN INSPIRATION FOR ARTISTS AND LIFEISTS IN MY FIELD WHICH IS PERFORMANCE ART. WHAT I DO IS TO TAKE MY LIFE ISSUES AND USE THESE ISSUES AS MATERIAL TO CREATE AN AESTHETIC STATEMENT.
I WILL SHARE A FEW SLIDES THAT I HAVE THEMATICALLY GATHERED TOGETHER TO ADDRESS TIME, ENDURACE AND PATIENCE IN MY ART. WHAT I SEE NOW HAVING RESEARCHED THE TEACHING OF DOROTHY DAY IS THAT MY ART-PENANCES WERE RADICALLY CLEARING AND PURIFYING ME. ARE THEY PREPARING ME? FOR WHAT?

RE-POST DOROTHY DAY LECTURE FOR ST FRANCUIS HOUSE, NEW LONDON CONN.





     


               
       


 
                             WISDOM: IS IT DOABLE? WHAT DOES DOROTHY DAY SAY?                                             
 
       Presented at  ST FRANCIS HOUSE: A CATHOLIC WORKER HOUSE OF HOSPITALITY, Connecticuit
 
                                                  Linda Mary Montano                                                                                          

PART 1

As we age, we gather more and more information and it takes us longer to retrieve facts and longer to cross reference neurocortexed  details from physical memories, psychological memories, moral memories, factual memories and spiritual memories. As a result of this multi level firing of information packets stored in our past experiences, we slow down to retrieve and let our wiring do it's job. This is not a bad thing but is often seen as a misdemeanor and sign of wrong, wrong, and more wrong. And the worst case scenario is that fear and trembling set in, the adrenal glands do the fight-flight dance and memory stalls to a halt. Permission to be slow, to walk slow, to think slow, to eat slow, to talk slow is a great cure for that.  Slow life, I salute you.

Back to the wise: The wise are spacious and exude an atmosphere of rich acceptance of reality as it is and  often wise elders are doppleganger-stand ins for  Zen masters when they are that in touch with their natural deep selves. Both exude mountain-like majesty.

So it is good to be  wise, good to be  slow and deep and spacious, certainly not qualities found on day and night TV shows  where speed, verbal karate and lightening -like dismissal of the moment and the other is a commodity to be treasured.

So now that being old and wise seems so fabulous, how do we approximate, imitate or practice to be wise. Here are a few suggestions; some are taken from an article by Vivian Clayton.

We all well know that the wise do all or some of these good things:

 *move mindfully&physically as much and as often as possible
*move mentally according to individual interests
*learn how to cultivate positive relationships
*volunteer according to individual interests by either physically going somewhere or digitally/spiritually supporting others
*deflect self-aggrandizement for positive recognition of others
*embrace acceptance
*eat to nourish and cleanse
*practice a spiritual  path
*learn to die daily to prepare for the final death
*laugh a lot

In my own story, my grandmother was my teacher...a radical and creative woman who created art  instead of worry about her life issues. She taught me  to transform my personal  monsters into myths via the arts.

 Because of her,  I wanted to always have elders in my life and in the 90's I interviewed a few of them from upstate NY and they mentored me to move toward aging with humility and humor.  The video ALWAYS CREATIVE tells their stories and can be found for free on You Tube to be seen in its entirety at your leisure.

The second video, LINDA MONTANO CELEBRATES MOTHER TERESA'S 100TH BIRTHDAY, is a performance I did in front of the Empire State Building in protest of the fact that they would not turn on the blue and white tower lights of the building  for Mother Theresa but turned on yellow lights for Sponge Bob. Their bad! I was there for 3 days, 3 hours a day, blessing people and many times being mistaken for the saint herself! I recommend theatre-training to anyone who would also like to experience walking in the shoes of someone they admire, just for a day!

Why did I choose to imitate Mother Teresa? I have been exploring myself as other personas, some imaginary, some real since 1976. About 7 years ago I developed a neurologic disorder called Cervical Dystonia, a spasming of neck muscles and cramping of other body muscles. One day in the middle of being totally twisted I said to myself, " I feel (actually look) like Mother Teresa, all bent over"!  and immediately as I thought this  the inner invitation to be her was born. Having gotten a permission from her nuns in the Bronx to act as if I were their foundress, I proceeded to appear as Mother Teresa for years.

I ask:  who was your positive elder-teacher in your childhood? Choose  one.  What did that elder give you? How have you used those teachings in your life?

PART 2

Dorothy Day was wise before she was old, i'm sure. Prayer is a wisdom-maker and so is suffering . I ask Dorothy Day to shine her wisdom on us and open those doors that yearn to feel wise light.

During the video LINDA MONTANO CELEBRATES MOTHER TERESA'S 100TH BIRTHDAY,  I will read a few sentences from the movie, ENTERTAINING ANGELS, a docudrama of the life of Dorothy Day, the founder along with Peter Marin, of the CATHOLIC WORKER and CATHOLIC WORKER HOUSES OF HOSPITALITY, as I stand with great honor in one of DOROTHY DAYS, HOUSES OF HOSPITALITY, ST FRANCIS HOUSE .

*CHRIST IS IN THE PEOPLE, READY TO FILL OUR EMPTINESS.

*YOU'RE A SMART WOMAN, MAKE UP YOUR OWN MIND.

*DOROTHY'S PRAYER: YOU'VE GOT TO TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT, WHAT I'M SUPPOSED TO DO. I WRITE BUT THAT'S NOT ENOUGH. PLEASE SHOW ME HOW. PLEASE.

*PEOPLE WHO ACT DONT THINK, PEOPLE WHO THINK DONT ACT.PETER  MARIN

*TAKE LESS SO OTHERS CAN HAVE MORE.

*FIND GOD. GOD IS AS CLOSE AS THE CLOSEST HUMAN BEING. ESPECIALLY THE POOR.

*THE POOR NEED A VOICE, YOU SHOULD START A NEWSPAPER. PETER MARIN

*JUSTICE AND PEACE GO TOGETHER. YOU CANT HAVE ONE WITHOUT THE OTHER.

*IF YOU FEED THE POOR YOU ARE A SAINT. IF YOU ASK WHY THEY ARE POOR YOU ARE A COMMUNIST. WE DO BOTH HERE AND WE ARE NEITHER SIANTS OR COMMUNISTS.

*HELP PEOPLE FEEL LOVED BY GOD.

*DOROTHY'S PRAYER: WHERE ARE YOU? WHY DONT YOU ANSWER ME? I NEED YOU. I'M EMPTY, I HAVE NOTHING LEFT TO GIVE.

*I'VE BEEN DOING ALOT OF THINKING ABOUT WHAT YOU SAID LAST NIGHT. YOU'RE RIGHT. I'VE BEEN ARROGANT AND SELF RIGHTEOUS WITH THE INTENT OF DOING EVERYTHING MYSELF INSTEAD OF LETTING GOD WORK THROUGH ME.  AND I'M SORRY FOR ALL OF THAT. IVE BEEN THINKING OF WHAT IT IS THAT GOD WANTS ME TO DO. IT'S BEEN A VERY LONELY LIFE AND IVE BEEN LOOKING TO FILL THE EMPTINESS AND NOW I SEE IT BEGINS WITH THESE PEOPLE. THEY ARE MY MEETING PLACE WITH GOD. IF I WERE JUST GIVEN A CHANCE I KNOW THAT GOD WOULD FILL ME WITH LOVE, FILL ME THROUGH THESE PEOPLE AND I HOPE THAT I DONT HAVE TO DO IT ALONE. BUT IF YOU CHOOSE TO LEAVE I WILL UNDERSTAND.

*THE PAPER IS NEVER GOING TO BE WHAT YOU OR I WANT I T TO BE BUT I DONT THINK THAT GOD WILL JUDGE US ON HOW SUCCESSFUL WE WERE TO CHANGE THE WORLD BUT ON HOW FAITHFUL WE WERE IN SERVING THE POOR.

* DOROTHY DAY CONTINUED TO FEED THE HUNGRY, CLOTHE THE NAKED, SHELTER THE HOMELESS UNTIL HER DEATH IN 1980. A CHAMPION OF NON-VIOLENCE, SHE WAS JAILED REPEATEDLY FOR PROTESTING THE NUCLEAR ARMS RACE AND THE WAR IN VIETNAM.
 L
Quotes taken from the docu-drama  ENTERTAINING ANGELS



LINDA WITH DEATH/GHOST IMAGE BY TOBE CAREY

Tobe Carey's photo.

LETTER TO PARTICIPANTS OF PHILLIPS LECTURE AND THE LECTURE


                                              
               
           LETTER TO PARTICIPANTS OF PHILILPS COLLECTION LECTURE,       2015 AND THE LECTURE   





 
DEAR PARTICIPANTS OF THE CONVERSATION BETWEEN LISA LIPINSKI AND LINDA MARY MONTANO.
THIS IS A HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT. PLEASE SHARE WITH OTHERS WHO ATTENDED THE CONVERSATION.
1.PERFORMANCE ART LINDA APPEARED THAT NIGHT.
BUT THERE ARE OTHERS:
2.THE LINDA WHO HAS WRITTEN 5 BOOKS AS HER PRACTICE. AND HAS ABOUT 350 WRITINGS ON HER BLOG.
3.THE LINDA WHO HAS OVER 50  FREE VIDEOS ON YOU TUBE AS HER PRACTICE.
4.THE LINDA WHO TEACHES AS HER PRACTICE.
5.THE LINDA WHO ENDURED 14 YEARS AS ART AS HER PRACTICE.
6.THE LINDA WHO FOUNDED THE ART/LIFE INSTITUTE TITLED: ANOTHER 21 YEARS OF LIVING ART AS HER PRACTICE.
7.THE LINDA WHO IS A LIVING SCULPTURE AS HER PRACTICE.

I HAVE INCLUDED AN ARTICLE I HAVE WRITTEN ABOUT MY SCULPTURE PRACTICE. SEE BELOW.

NOW FOR YOUR HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENT:
LOVE YOUR OVARIES OR TESTES
LOVE YOUR PANCREAS
LOVE YOUR ADRENALS
LOVE YOUR THYMUS
LOVE YOUR THYROID/PARATHYROID
LOVE YOUR PINEAL
LOVE YOUR PITUITARY

AGAIN, THANK YOU FOR ATTENDING OUR EVENT AND BEST OF EVERYTHING TO EACH OF YOU.
IN ART/LIFE/HEALING/JOY
LINDA









MY SCULPTURE THEN AND NOW: I AM REALLY A LIVING, BREATHING SCULPTURE
 
 
LINDA MARY MONTANO 2015

1946 -1960s: My sculpture career began early. I remember sitting at the Montano family dinner table, making what I called "teensies" by rolling up torn off pieces of paper napkins into miniscule long strips and then further rolling them until they were tensile strength linear squiggle-like "lines" that I could then place alone, together or in a group of Stonehengeish arrangements for my own viewing pleasure. Dad would respond with, "Hands, ( his name for me ) , concentrate on eating your supper," while I gathered my "sculptures" from their hiding places among the fork, knife and spoon gallery of objects which were supposed to be used to eat the then American fare of the 40's: meat-loaf, veal, Spanish rice and jello. I loved my name, hands, I loved using my hands. I continued to use my hands.  It is a name  that I deserved.

1960s: My mother, a painter and my father a trumpet player and lover of music, encouraged , or better yet, allowed me to return to college after I flunked out of the Nunnery. It was there, academia,  that I attempted to become a normal 60's hippie, a delicate job since I was then a once almost nun; fragile, anorexic, weighing 80 pounds and certifiably ill. In the 60s, especially in a small upstate NY village, therapy was not an option or even existent and a better thing happened.... I met my liberator, my mentor, my art guru, a nun professor at a Catholic women's college, named Mother Mary Jane. What a boon! She gave me permission to embrace art and to heal. Her own practice was sculpture so of course I imitated her passion, having created many Stonehenges as a child. So for my Bachelor of Arts degree, under her tutlage, I made seven versions of the Visitation; Mary and Elizabeth embracing, both pregnant. A psychologically rich choice!  And I must admit that my art bucket list includes 2 final sculptures; a 40 foot tall Visitation and a Stonehenge-like 11 objects in a circle titled, "Rosary."  Teenies' magnified!

1965: I continued wanting to make with my hands and went to a graduate school in Florence Italy for a year, studying with a Hungarian male sculptor, a once violinist who was a student of Kodaly who, after having injured his hand and arm  in the Hungarian Revolution,  became a maker of objects, not sounds from his violin. I continued sculpting  "Prayer Art" making crucifixes of wood, copper, clay and shipping it all back to the states via the compassion of my kind parents.

1966-69: Although I was a diligent and obedient grad student, working in all of the mediums and materials of the then conceptual art of the 60s in Madison Wisconsin, I presented for my MFA show, 9 chickens in 3 bigger than life minimalist  cages, thereby satisfying the going trend of the times: bigger is better. But putting chickens in the cages saved my day because it began an art-life stance and mental frame that I practice until this second: that all is art, that I am art and more accurately, that I am LIVING ART, A LIVING SCULPTURE.

1970s: After grad school, the floodgates of matter becoming potential for my expression and intentionality continued and I worked with anything that I could see or find or touch. But once I was introduced to Yoga and Eastern Theologies and especially Meditation, I soon became MY OWN MATERIAL FOR ART. That is, I manipulated myself using my early childhood Catholic imagery and sat, danced, laid on chicken-angel beds for hours at a time giving myself permission to BE ART, TO BE LIFE, TO BE MEDITATIVE, TO BE SEEN AND HEALED BY THE VIEWER, TO BE AS SACRED AS A CATHOLIC STATUE IN A CATHOLIC CHURCH.  Look at me, I will make me for you.  I was re-doing art and religion for myself by becoming a Catholic woman art-life PRIEST!

1980S:  For Catholics and practitioners of spiritual disciplines, endurance is a penitential given which leads to great benefits if understood correctly.  I endured to become virtuous and to sculpt time by eliminating it, by passing it by, by ignoring it, by morphing it into space because I would do an action for X amount of hours or years, as art, and the intention was to sculpt my inner clay-consciousness so that I could understand my everyday mind that worried or feared or became anxious or attached.
So I sculpted this mind-stuff by blindfolding myself for weeks at a time; I handcuffed myself to an artist and tied myself to another for a year with a rope joining him in his concept; I focused on the 7 glands-chakras for 14 years, wearing one color clothes while practicing other disciplines that stretched my consciousness and habituation. I  willingly became the fool (sometimes Divine)  so as to collect the dross of the audiences' sturm und drang.

1990s: Life is art. My father's life was my art. My father's illness became the focus and locus for my attention and I used every art-life skill that I had to perform as his caregiver, as his daughter, as his friend, documenting the 7 years of our time together as a collaborator and  manager for his care. I consider these years a denouement, a chance to employ a Herculean inner force for the pain was so intensely purifying that I began preparing for my own closing act, my own last public exploration of my shared/unshared visions. His death eventuated in sending my need for  simplification into process; sending my archive to Fales NYU  Library; sending my 50 videos, made with Tobe Carey,  to You Tube for free; sending the over one dozen personas that I created and impersonated to find the real me; sending myself into invisible opposition. There is a need to not do more but to be less, do less.
 

2000s: Now I invite others to the home where I was raised; no longer a home but  THE ART LIFE INSTITITE & TRANSFIGUATION HOSPITAL. The house of teensies.
Here I answer my final question, a question I have ben asking since I turned ripped up napkins into mini sculptures back  at the dinner table in 1945. I ask friends to come, be with me in the presence of a purchased BLACK MADONNA sculpture. Come to the chapel. My crucifix sculptures are also there. It's enough.
 
 NOW: My final question? Silent LOVE.

TIME AND MY WORK




TIME

WHEN I TALK ABOUT TIME IN MY ART, I AM NOT REFERRING TO PHYSICS AND THE CONCEPTS THE SCIENTISTS THINK ABOUT LIKE:
TIME AND  ENTROPY
TIME AND RANDOM FLUCTUATIONS
TIME AND MEASUREABLENESS
TIME AND RELATIVITY
TIME AND BLACK HOLES
TIME AND MOTION
TIME AND FORCE
TIME AND A BLOCK UNIVERSE
TIME AND THE BIG BANG

NO, THIS IS NOT MY LANGUAGE. CONVERSELY, AS AN ARTIST, I BELEIVE THAT ALL IS AVAILABLE TO ME AND SINCE THE 60'S I INVITED TIME AND IT'S PURITY, TIME AND IT'S INVISIBILITY, TIME AND ITS MALLEABILITY, TIME AND IT'S MYSTERIOUSNESS TO PLAY WITH ME.

I'M NOT GOING TO CHANGE COURSE AND EMOTIONALLY BLAME MY  FASCINATION WITH TIME ON THE FACT THAT MY DAD DIDNT HAVE ANY BECAUSE AS A CHILD OF THE DEPRESSION AND WW2 CLIMATE OF DREAD, HE WORKED 24/7 SIX AND A HALF DAYS A WEEK TO FEED, CLOTHE AND HOUSE ALL 6 OF US. TIME TOOK DAD FROM ME. HMMM. SO I TOOK TIME AWAY FROM TIME AND MADE ART ABOUT IT???STRANGE THINKING BUT MAYBE THERE IS SOME TRUTH IN THIS.

LET ME NOW SHARE WITH YOU A FEW SLIDES OF SOME OF MY DURATIONS/ENDURANCES SO THAT WE  CAN SEE HOW TIME AND I LEARNED HOW TO FINALLY DANCE TOGETHER FOR THESE LAST  50 YEARS.
 
1. TIME AND CHICKENS: For my MFA I showed 9 live chickens at  UW Madison, in 3 giant minimalist looking "cages" (sculptures).
 
2. TIME AND MARKING TIME: WALKING ON A TREADMILL FOR 3 HOURS TELLING THE STOR OF MY LIFE, WEARING A PERMANENT SMILE DEVICE.
 
3. TIME AND MEDITAION; LYING DEAD CHICKEN LIVE ANGEL: I laid in an angel-chicken bed for 3 hours as a saint/statue.
 
4. TIME AND AVAILABILITY: SITTING IN MY GARAGE FOR 8 HOURS, GARAGE TAALK. Being available like my grandmother was.
 
5. TIME AND EXPOSURE: TALKING ABOUT SEX WHILE UNDER HYPNOSIS DRESSED LIKE MY SISTER. I hid under hypnosis to divulge the truth therefore  leaving  actual time to go into altered mental time.
 
6. TIME AND TRANCE; DANCING FOR 3 HOURS TO PRODUCE TRANCE IN THE SIGN OF A CROSS.
 
7. TIME AND LIFE: LIVING ART; LIVING IN AGALLERY FOR 3 DAYS AS  ART/LIFE.
 
8. TIME AND PERSONA MORPHING; LIVING IN A GALLERY FOR 5 DAYS AS 5 DIFFERENT PEOPLE. ONE DRAWING A DAY AS THAT PERSONA.
 
9. TIME AND PAIN: LIVING FOR 3 HOURS IN A GALLERY WITH ACUPUNCTURE NEEDLES IN MY HEART.
 
10: TIME AND MISSING LOVE: SENDING MY ASTRAL SELF TO ANOTHER CITY.
 
11: TIME AND LIVING AS ART: LIVING IN A VAN AS ART FOR MANY DAYS
 
12. TIME AND LIVING SCULPTURE: LIVING IN A GALLERY AS  LIFE AND ART.
 
13: TIME AND NO SIGHT: LIVING WITHOUT SIGHT FOR A WEEK. PERFORMED MANY DIFFERENT TIMES.
 
14. TIME AND TRAVEL: ORGANIZING A WALKING CLUB AND INVITING OTHERS TO WALK WITH ME.
 
15: TIME AND STOPPING TIME: HANDCUFF TO TOM MARIONI FOR 3 DAYS. EXPERIENCING TIME TOGETHER.
 
16. TIME AND AVAILABILITY: GARAGE TALK: SPENDING 8 HOURS WORKING AS AN ARTIST.
 
17. TIME AND PURIFICATION: TELLING SINS FROM SAN FRANCISCO BALCONY FOR 7 HOURS.
 
18: TIME AND ATTACHMENT: DRESSING AS A NURSE TO OBLITERATE MY ATTACHMENT TO MY OWN SELF AS ARTIST..
 
19: TIME AND DEATH: TELLING THE STORY OF MITCHELL PAYNE'S DEATH, LEAVING TIME.
 
20: TIME AND FREEDOM: SPENDING ONE YEAR TIED WITH A 8 FOOT ROPE TO TEHCHING HSIEH IN HIS  ONE YEAR PERFORMANCE.
 
21: TIME AND GIVING MY TIME: OFFERING ART/LFIE COUNSELING AS A WAY TO MAKE TIME TO BE INTIMATE WITH OTHERS.
 
22: TIME AND OBLITERATION OF GENDER: BECOMING MALE AND FEMALE AND BALANCED.
 
23. TIME AND THE 7 CHAKRAS AND GLANDS: SPENING 14 YEARS TO BECOME ACQUAINTED WITH THE CHAKRAS AND GLANDS.
 
24: TIME AND REPEATING TIME: REPEATING 7 YEARS OF LIVING ART, A CHAKRA EXPERIENCE.
 
25: TIME AND WRITING ABOUT TIME: ASKING OTHERS TO SUPPORT MY WORK VIA ANOTHER BOOK.
 
26: TIME AND TAKING TIME TO TEACH:  TEACHING OTHERS TAKES TIME AND GIVES STIME.
 
27.TIME AND END TIME: DAD ART: TAKING CARE OF DAD AS  ART.
 
28.TIME AND SILENCE: LYING DOWN IN FRONT OF THE BLACK MADONNA AND LETTING GO OF TIME.
 
LINDA MARY MONTANO, 2015

 

ARTNEWS: PAUL MCMAHON AT 321 GALLERY : PERFORMANCE WITH LIND MARY MONTANO

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    Magic Numbers: ‘Pictures’ Artist Paul McMahon, ‘The Troubadour King of Woodstock,’ Sets Up in Brooklyn

    Paul McMahon and Linda Montano Performing at 321 Gallery. VIDEO STILL
    Paul McMahon and Linda Montano Performing at 321 Gallery.
    VIDEO STILL
    Last Thursday, the artist Paul McMahon staged a performance inside of a retrospective show of his work currently on view at 321 Gallery in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. The exhibition is titled “44” and contains 44 works spread over 44 years (one per year) of the artist’s long and winding career, which at various points has led him into the worlds of art, music, and even comedy and television. He currently resides in Woodstock, New York, where he lives with his twin daughters in an “everything center” called the Mothership. He also works one day a week as a mailman.
    For the night, McMahon was joined by the equally accomplished performance artist Linda Mary Montano, flanking him inside of a shrine-like installation that contained, among many other things, photos of Obama, Dalai Lama, and Charles Manson. She was dressed like McMahon’s doppelganger—fake beard, hat, shades—and loosely mirrored his acoustic guitar and vocal moves without really making any noise. She occasionally stomped her feet or sang softly, but for the most part it was an earnest act of lip-syncing.
    “Paul is the troubadour king of Woodstock, N.Y.,” Montano—who has also done a similar thing as Mother Teresa, Bob Dylan, and her father—told me in an interview alongside McMahon before the performance. “Highly honored, highly respected. Seen as one of the true practitioners of all that’s correct about life and art.” For Montano, performing as McMahon was a way to “learn more about his philosophy.” The first time she performed as the artist was at the Mothership, where she lip-synced to his recorded music for seven hours while McMahon was present in the room, but not performing. “I had time off. I had the day off,” he told me with a laugh.
    McMahon is seen by some as a bridge between 1970s Conceptual art and the Pictures Generation in New York and was included in the 2009 “Pictures Generation” show at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In addition to visual art, in the ’80s he worked on The Muppets and wrote a published book of “potato jokes.” He once appeared on The Soupy Sales Show in a giant spud costume made with a double bed foam piece. “I had a lot of other careers that I didn’t pursue,” he told me. “I don’t want to be a giant potato [for a living]. I’m not interested.” He had a Kundalini rising experience in 1998 and told me that in 1993 “the goddess spoke inside my head and told me I’m king of the universe, and that was 22 years ago, so I’ve been sort of trying to figure things out, you know?”
    (Montano’s life as a performance artist is equally hard to summarize. It notably includes a seven-year project in which she wore only monochromatic clothing and spent part of each day in a colored room listening to a specified tone. All of this correlated to the qualities of a singular chakra, which changed yearly. She was raised Catholic but lived in a Zen monastery for three years and studied with Dr. Ramamurti Mishra at the Ananda Ashram in upstate New York the 1980s. Over the past decade, she has returned to her Catholic roots. “I realized that not everybody has chakras but everybody has glands,” she said as a way of explaining a new performance but also, perhaps, her reformed Catholicism.)
    McMahon’s artist statement for “44” treads numerology, Eastern spirituality, and ’60s countercultural theory into a larger narrative centered on the events of 9/11 and our current president—the country’s 44th. In person, he combines mystic spirituality in earnest with a hearty dash of good-natured irreverence. Although his look now could be described as “Woodstock lifer” (he was wearing smiley-face pajama bottoms during the performance), a video included in the exhibition shows him in the early ’80s with shorter hair, performing in a style not unlike, say, Jonathan Richman. He was once even in a band with No Wave icon Glenn Branca.
    “It looks bad for humanity, but I think it also looks good,” McMahon said, explaining his outlook. “And I think that there’s a good chance that the world as we think of it is not really the way it is, and that it’s much more a product of what we think it is than we think it is what it is. The nature of reality is extremely interactive, much more interactive than we’ve been led to believe.”
    “It’s neural mirroring,” Montano added. “That the neurons in the brain mirror what we’re thinking. So, if we’re thinking X the neurons are going to get addicted to X and when we start thinking Y…”
    “What about triple X?” McMahon interjected. They both laughed.
    Thursday’s performance fell on the final night of Navratri, the Hindu festival of the Goddess. This fact was not lost on McMahon, who told me that he would be playing mostly love songs. “It’s a lot of Goddess stuff,” he said to the crowd at the start of the performance. “For you men in the room, it’s all pussy stuff.” The set was very much rooted in the American singer-songwriter tradition, albeit with a few curveballs. He covered “Fool’s Gold” by the British boy band One Direction, a song beloved by one of his daughters.
    At one point in the show, McMahon was pontificating about his admiration for the President (he had made baseball caps with the letter “O” on the front) when a crowd member shouted something critical about the Trans-Pacific Partnership, to which McMahon s(w)ung back “Barack Hussein Obama, he’s not perfect in every way he could be.” From there, McMahon deftly improvised some lyrics about the TPP before singing a punch line of sorts: “I’d rather have Obama than Mitt Romney.” To this, the unimpressed heckler responded by simply yelling “same thing.”
    Instead of escalating this further, McMahon chose to go a different route, starting up an altogether different song. “What makes a man go crazy when a women wears her skirt so tight,” he sang, choosing to return to the night’s primary subject matter. All the while, Montano continued to play along, fake beard and all.
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