Artists Space

Paul McMahon is an extremely eclectic creator, whose fields of endeavor include visual art, music, humor, writing, curating, presenting, producing and spirituality. His work in a variety of media and contexts, has been reviewed or cited in the New York Times, Village Voice, Soho Weekly News, Paper, Artforum, ArtNEWS, Real Life, Woodstock Times, Chronogram, the Boston Globe, Boston Phoenix, Sound Choice, Flashart, East Village Eye, Avalanche, Esquire and Interview, among others. He has released 12 albums of original music; over 100 songs on vinyl, cassette, CD, and online streaming platforms. He is the proprietor of the Mothership, an ‘Everything Center’ he calls a spiritual social sculpture in progress since 2007 in Woodstock. Since 2007, he has been deeply honored to be impersonated by Linda Mary Montano as his lip synching doppelgänger at live performances.

Linda Mary Montano is a performance artist born in 1942, Saugerties, New York. Montano considers herself a living sculpture, and her practice is dedicated to blurring the boundaries between art and life incorporating themes including spirituality, medicine, death, humor, and the autobiographical. She studied sculpture at Villa Schifanoia, Italy, graduating with an M.A in 1966, and in 1969, she received an M.F.A. in sculpture from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Her performance practice has included endurances and the adopting of various personas; Bob Dylan, Paul McMahon and Mother Theresa. In 1973, she lived handcuffed to artist Tom Marioni for three days, and in 1983 she lived tied to artist Tehching Hsieh for one year in his Art/Life One Year Performance 1983–1984, 1983-1984. Her endurance work lasting 14 years—Fourteen Years of Living Art, 1984-1998—was an extended study of Hindu Chakras. In the 1970s, Montano also began incorporating video art into her practice collaborating with artist and editor Tobe Carey. Over 100 video works are in the collection of Video Data Bank. Between 1991 and 1998, she taught Performance at UT Austin, Texas. Her work has been included in major group exhibitions such as WACK! Art and the Feminist Revolution held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles in 2007, traveling to MoMA P.S. 1, New York in 2008. A survey of her work—Linda Mary Montano: Always Creative—was presented at SITE, Santa Fe in 2013. Montano lives in the Art/Life Institute & Transfiguration Hospital, Saugerties, New York.