Dad and Mom: Art Giving Life
Linda Mary Montano and Ed Woodham
End-of-Life works created by their parents
Henry Montano and Carrol Hedger Woodham

Tuesday, April 19 – Sunday, June 5, 2016
Endicott College, Beverly, MA 
Heflter Visiting Artist Gallery

Beverly, MA  - Endicott College is pleased to announce a joint exhibition presented by legendary feminist performance artist Linda Mary Montano and global public artist Ed Woodham (Art in Odd Places). Mom and Dad: Art Giving Life presents works created by the artists' parents, Henry Montano and Carrol Woodham, during their struggle with terminal illness.  The exhibition is located in the Heftler Visiting Artist Gallery at the Walter J. Manninen Center for the Arts at Endicott College from Tuesday, April 19 – Sunday, June 5, 2016.  A Gallery Talk in the Hefter Visiting Artist Gallery will take place on Thursday, April 28 at 4:00 p.m. followed by a reception from 5:00 – 6:30 p.m.   On Wednesday, April 27, from 12 noon – 3:00 p.m.  Linda Montano and Ed Woodham will be creating a performance titled CHICKENARAMA located outside of the Center for the Arts (rain location: Grillo Gallery).  

A first generation Italian American, Henry Montano founded the Montano’s Shoe Store in Saugerties, New York, but was more healer than salesman.  According to his daughter Linda, “people would come from far distances to be fitted and have their foot problems corrected and my dad would do this in a very caring and compassionate way.  Living with dad was like living with a mystical Zen Master.”  After a tragic medical accident and hemorrhagic stroke, Henry Montano started painting therapeutically under the mentorship of his daughter, a practice he continued for three years until his death. As a result he produced a colorful body of work that conveys his creativity, search for peace, and reconnection with loved ones.  

Born in Kokomo, Indiana, Carrol Woodham was a factory worker and homemaker who survived personal tragedy and straitened circumstances and moved to Atlanta, Georgia in the late 1950’s.  Later in life Carol suffered from Multiple System Atrophy, a rare and debilitating degenerative neurological disorder, and in 2008 a stroke pushed her into full-blown dementia. Under the guidance of her son Ed, assisted by her caregivers, she began to draw while bedridden to calm her fears and focus her attention. Though she had never before shown any interest or aptitude for art, over the next four years her drawings went from rudimentary scribbles to large, complex, and fully resolved compositions. Sometimes working for months on a single drawing, Carrol expressed the difficult end of her life through hundreds of drawings until the disease finally overtook her motor functions.

Beyond a moving immersion in expressive arts therapy and a medium of loving communication between parent and child, the works on display function aesthetically to convey themes of struggle, loneliness, mortality, as well as a joyous and  magical reconnection with life itself.

Artists' Bios

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. In the beginning, the 70’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: 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 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.
A gallery booklet accompanies the exhibition as well as a short film with interviews from Linda Mary Montano and Ed Woodham.  The exhibition, gallery talk and reception are free and open to the public.  This exhibition is funded in part by the van Otterloo Family Foundation.

Artist Talk:  Thursday, April 28, 4:00 p.m.
Reception:  Thursday, April 28, 5:00 – 6:30 p.m.

CHICKENARAMA: A Performance by Linda Mary Montano and Ed Woodham
Outside the Center for the Arts (Rain Location-Carol Grillo Gallery)
Wednesday, April 27, 12:00 – 3:00 p.m.

Gallery Hours: April 19 -  May 13
Monday – Thursday,  9:00 a.m. – 7:00 p.m.
Friday,  9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 2:00 – 4:00 p.m.
Gallery Hours: May 14 – June 5
Monday – Friday, 9:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Closed on Monday, May 30.