June Portfolio: Linda Montano

Linda Montano at the former Ulster County Jail.

Linda M. Montano has explored art, life, and spirituality in her innovative performance work for almost 40 years. A native of Saugerties, she earned a reputation in the 1970s and ’80s for her long-term performances—for example, spending days or weeks blindfolded, taping a stethoscope to her heart to learn how to listen, telling the story of her life while walking on a treadmill—always focusing on intensifying the experience of life in art and art in/as life. For Taiwanese artist Tehching Hsieh’s Art/Life: One Year Performance, she spent a full year roped at the waist to him. (The rope was eight feet long; their only rules were that they could never touch, and they had to stay in the same room.)

Over the last 20 years, she has developed the concept of art/life counseling, engaging her audience increasingly directly and individually. She will continue this practice with a new, seven-hour piece titled Lighten Up, which will take place from noon to 7pm in a cell at the former Ulster County Jail, on the opening day of the 2007 Kingston Sculpture Biennial on July 7.

Portfolio: www.bobsart.org

(Full disclosure: I am co-curator of this year’s biennial, and invited Montano to participate.)

—Beth E. Wilson