“Chickenarama” Art Performance by Legendary Seminal Feminist and Public Artist
April 14, 2016 -Endicott College is pleased to present “Chickenarama,” a performance installation by legendary feminist artist Linda Mary Montano and global public artist Ed Woodham to take place outside the Walter J. Manninen Center for the Arts on the Endicott College campus, 376 Hale Street, Beverly onWednesday, April 27. Dressed and behaving as chickens, the artists, Linda Mary Montano and Ed Woodham, will occupy a large coop for three hours from 12:00 noon -3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, April 27 . The work evokes and explores themes of freedom and captivity, flightless flight, spiritual presence and sacrifice, and the codependent pleasures of domestication. It also pays homage to the living sculpture and life/art tradition pioneered by Linda Montano’s breakthrough performance piece, “Chicken Woman” (1972) as well as Ed Woodham’s signature public art/performance practice, Art in Odd Places.
The event is presented in conjunction with the gallery exhibition, Dad and Mom: Art Giving Life, the first showing of works created by Henry Montano and Carrol Woodham (the Dad and Mom of Linda and Ed) in their end-of-life art therapeutic practice. The works will be available for viewing from April 19 through June 5 in the Heftler Visiting Artist Gallery. There will be a gallery talk April 28 at 4:00 p.m., with an opening reception from 5:00-6:30 p.m. The “Chickenarama” performance also coincides with a campus residency by Ed Woodham, culminating in a campus-wide festival of public art created and installed by students and the Endicott community members under the auspices of Art in Odd Places: Believe. These works will be on display from April 29 – May 6.
Although trained as a sculptor, Linda Mary Montano extended her boundaries into sculpting herself as art and chose life issues, traumas and concerns as matter for her art. During the 1970’s, she relied on the presence of her body as her practice but always made videos to accompany her vision. After her endurance, 14 YEARS OF LIVING ART , 1984-1998, Montano focused on video and also continued to perform body modifications and morphed herself into live people including Mother Teresa, Bob Dylan and Paul McMahon, so that she could articulate the Vedantic theological belief that states, “You are not your body, you are not your mind. You are the Great, I AM.” As time went on, Montano began seeing her work as a spiritual, monastic endurance that would hopefully awaken her to Wisdom, Compassion and Christ Consciousness, states of mind that she began discovering in childhood. Luckily there was always and continues to be a guffaw waiting in the wings.
For over 25 years, Ed Woodham has been active in community art, education, and civic interventions across media and culture. A visual and performance artist, puppeteer, and curator, Woodham employs humor, irony, subtle detournement, and a striking visual style in order to encourage greater consideration of—and provoke deeper critical engagement with—the urban environment. Responding to constriction of civil liberties, Woodham created the project Art in Odd Places (AiOP) presenting visual and performance art to reclaim public spaces in New York City and beyond. In New York, Woodham teaches City as Site: Public Art as Social Intervention at the School of Visual Art, as well as workshops in politically based public performance at NYU’s Hemispheric Institute’s EMERGENYC. He was a 2013 Blade of Grass Fellow in Social Engagement. Currently, he is working on a commissioned work, The Keepers for 2016, in his longtime neighborhood of Gowanus, Brooklyn.
All events are free and open to the public. The performance, exhibition, and AiOP festival are made possible through the generous support of Endicott College and funded in part by the van Otterloo Family Foundation, a Plansoen foundation grant, with Chickenarama materials donated by Green Meadows Farm in South Hamilton, MA. For more information on any of these events, please contact Kathleen Moore at 978-23-2655 or kmoore@endicott.edu