A 7 STEP RECIPE FOR MAKING ME A PERFORMANCE ART by LINDA MARY MONTANO

  A 7 STEP RECIPE FOR MAKING ME A PERFORMANCE ART  by LINDA MARY MONTANO

Step 1. TOSS... January 1942 , born Benedictine hospital into a Catholic family. Many of my actions and sculptures are influenced by Catholicism and I intend to adjust via performance anything which is not spiritually valuable to me now. Question. How does your family religion influence your life and art.
Step 2 MIX. Maternal grandfather born on the boat coming from Cork Ireland. Our Paternal grandparents immigrated from Italy never speaking English . The performance lesson. Their difference was intriguing and inspired me to  later work with 10 different internal personas as art. 7 in the video LEARNING TO TALK. And now: Bob Dylan, Mother Teresa, Paul McMahon. Question. What did your grandparents mirror for you?
Step 3 DECORATE. My Maternal grandmother is an outsider artist. I stood silent next to her daily as she created unusual art magic and she would take her teeth out to sing for me. If I had the wings of an Angel. The teaching. There is always someone who opens the door to the creative for us.
Step 4. FOLD IN GENTLY. Mom and Dad are creative, they had a family band . Dad trumpet, Mom sang 30’s standards. Lesson. Linda performs what she learned back then.
Step 5. PREHEAT. Spiritual training. 13 years Catholic school, 2 years silent in convent, 2 years silent in a zen center . As a child I wanted to be a Catholic priest and a saint. But I learned later that my spiritual proclivities are all in the BRAIN. That is: My brain is medically wired to love religion because my ventromedial frontal cortex gets positively activated by religion. It’s medical. Science reveals our talents. Performance for me is medicine, is church, is ritual, is healing , is vision quest, is boundary breaking, is trauma clearing, is self directed unconditioning, is my language of choice. Question. How does your wiring work. Your dna?
Step 5. SEASON with time. ENDURE  for a length of time AS ART and Do something, do anything long enough for the worry brain, the guilty brain, the shame brain, the trauma brain, the fear brain to exhaust itself and then good emptiness visits.
STEP 6: MARINATE Dad wanted to be a dentist but had no financial support. Montano’s Shoe store became a place where I witnessed Dad the healer everyday when we visited and saw him on his knees checking shoes to see if they fit. The store became my school, a place that taught devotion to helping and healing: READ THE LIST. My art mimics and imitates the people in my life. In the Immediate family there are 4 nurses, 2 dentists, a surgeon, a hospital dietician, a dietician to be in grad school, a pediatrician and  an internal medicine physician!! I do medicine differently. I do art.  QUESTION, what did you see early in your life that influenced your current vocation.
STEP 7: GARNISH Mom, brave and inspiring, dressing up at Halloween into her seventies, painted hundreds of paintings, sang and played the piano....became the president of the Nurses committee without being a nurse. Mom a brave and fun loving persona guide.
BON APPETITE!! The recipe is complete.  I  have gratitude for all my past performance art influences, and I practice the healing for now which for me is to perform and make videos about the  ART OF AGING, to do that I practice asking for help as art and  l also  lay down occasionally in coffins, as art, and prepare for my LAST PERFORMANCE, the one we all perform.
In conclusion, I’ve heard friends say before a meal, ENJOY!!! May we all find heartfelt ways to enjoy our precious creative life!  In JOY.   THANK YOU