HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... MUSCULAR BONDING-PHOTO DOCUMENTS Adriana Disman, Nina Isabelle, Kaia Gilje, Beth Neff, Esther Neff, Edward Sharp M.A.R.S.H, St. Louis / Living Arts, Tulsa, OK ​ February 15 - March 5, 2018 ​ We traveled, lived, worked, and performed together for three weeks as a performance experiment conceived, initiated, and enforced by Esther Neff. On February 15, 2018 we drove from Panoply Performance Lab in Brooklyn, NY to M.A.R.S.H (Materializing & Activating Radical Social Habitus) in St. Louis, MO. We lived, worked, and ate together under strict and extreme circumstances, and then performed actions that were devised through collective manipulation to "materialize participant's structural realities" at The New Genre Art Festival at Living Arts Tulsa. ​ ​ ​ Kaia Gilje & Adriana Disman carry a sheet of dry wall up a staircase at M.A.R.S.H. (Materializing & Activating Radical Social Habitus) in St. Louis, MO. Photo: Nina Isabelle

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... INTERVIEWS LINDA MARY MONTANO INTERVIEW 2020 ACTIVATING PERCEPTION Midtown Arts District 2017 ARTiculACTion 2016 Aaron Pierce February 2017 ​ A: I am a graduate from Utah Valley University and I am writing a dissertation for the university's biannual Art History Symposium. The topic of discussion this year is Maximalism. I am particularly focusing on performance art as the contemporary medium that is reinventing museum spaces and engaging audiences by stimulating the senses more through music, dance, film, and painting combined. That is where your exhibit Animal Maximalism came to my attention. I am completely intrigued and enthralled by your performance art pieces and projects you have created. For this paper, I would love to have your view on performance art and Maximalism. I am interested in hearing some of your methods about performance art and Maximalism. It is rare in art history to be able to have contact with the artist, hence my excitement. If you do not mind sharing your opinion, I would like to know how you feel performance art engages audiences and pushes them to connect on a higher level to art? Also, why are we seeing a shift towards more performance art pieces in museums and galleries? I feel that audiences want to have a full sensory experience. How does Maximalist performance art achieve this better than other medium of art? ​ N: I practice a process of allowance where I let myself do what I want. This approach results in maximum data and action. By letting myself engage with an array of modalities I can generate multiple outcomes and possibilities. Because I'm not limited to any single mode of involvement, I'm free to use painting, performance, photography, or video or a mixture of modalities as I find necessary depending on my agenda and instinct. This suits my athletic, resourceful, and determined nature. ​ I approach performance art in the same way I would approach any other art modality- by paying close attention to gut instincts and psychic impressions in a process designed to override cerebral programming. The aim is always to align action with intention, and make note of the findings and outcome along the way. Performance art is a good choice when the concept I'm grappling with calls for a human body, action, or a narrative to actuate the outcome, especially literal concepts like worshiping the golden calf or using blood to cleanse things. My body can become a tool, a stand-in, or effigy of or for the viewer, creating a point of commonality to facilitate access. Aligning action with intention is also a way to re-frame ritual and an attempt to validate the effectiveness of approaches historically relegated to realms of religious structures and beliefs. I was recently invited to teach an art theory class for kids at The Hudson Valley Sudbury School. Through our discussions it emerged that the students felt most drawn to art practices and outcomes that suited the nature, mentality, and necessity of the individual artist. For instance they could relate to how Chuck Close became successful at painting faces as a result of his lifelong struggle with a facial recognition disorder. In reflecting on my personal method it occurs to me that my mode of operation is dictated by my nature, I didn't choose to function within the Maximalism approach and philosophy, it's just that the philosophy happens to align with my nature. I'm a serial over-doer of all things who relishes the opportunity to push things too far. My work is reactionary because I'm a reactionary person. For instance the first time I encountered minimalism I was ready to explode in a thousand directions. And, as an art student I couldn't help but challenge typical art professor's slogans such as "You have to know when to stop." Of course I could recognized the academically dictated stopping point but I would never in a million years stop there. I've always felt that learning how to challenge, push, or destroy something is a valid study when handled respectfully and with intention. ​ Performance art is an another mode of operating for artists to use in order to find or generate new information, to experiment with creating new experiences, or to try to express something they otherwise couldn't. It can engage the viewer in an intimate way offering the potential to build powerful experiences as it facilitates a space that can involve and include the viewer in a novel physical or psychic way. It's possible that since performance art inhabits walking space where gallery-goers would otherwise be moving about, a psychic connection is created by sharing the same space. As viewers, we know less about what it would be like to hang motionless on a wall. Performance art offers a platform for artists to practice aligning action with intention, a way to possibly re-frame ritual and to build experimental new models for of control or power to replace outmoded religious structures and beliefs. But also, It's possible the performance art trend might be a way for artists to backhandedly confront consumerism and elitism simultaneously, or at least to create the illusion of doing so. Commercial galleries and academic environments can be market driven or exclusive, but performance art has the ability to dissolve those traditional notions and to expand viewership by engaging broader mentalities in a way that would be difficult for strictly visual work focused on heady concepts or dollar amounts. And since we live in a culture of visual bombardment, where viewer's digitally conditioned eyes and minds are increasingly savvy, and in conjunction with consumer programming, we need something that can function both inside of and outside of commercial gallery and academic paradigms. There is a literal dissolution of boundaries. Since performance art is impervious to ownership and commodification, it pushes against market-driven capitalist structures and challenges a system where finances determine success. Issues of marketability, ownership, or commodity all come into play because its difficult to financially capitalize off of performance art. So, maybe it's like most trends- timely and culturally necessity. ​ I developed the Animal Maximalism exhibition concept as a way to bombard the human sensory input manifold with the intention of revealing cloaked information. I use the word "Animal" as an homage to instinct. For me academia operated through reversal, fueling my defiance more than refining me the way school is supposed to, so part of my mission has always been to build legitimate framework for us animals, one that is less cage-like, and Maximalism is a good framework for that agenda. I try to work within and build upon systems that already exist that might reflect and support my authentic nature, and to allow my work to reflect and be a response to the full spectrum of my body's biologic manifestation of its own history within its cultural environment. Maximalism feels like science-fiction, in that it offers the potential for system building where the inward personal landscape can travel all the way outward through the giant jumbled experience of collective household, community, country, and planetary psychic connections. Maybe performance offers an easier access point to the viewer in that we can all relate to each other as humans who are human shaped and have human form. We all share common ways of moving our human forms through space. It's possible that performance could function to create a portal, like a way out or a way in. The Cult of Painting by Nina Isabelle 2014 ​ Painting is a visual, psychological, or metaphysical study or exploration of an object or non-object, a place or non-place, an inner, outer, or simultaneous multiple psychic dimensions, something other, all, or none of the above. Various viscosities of liquid or paste suspending colored pigments in oil, wax, synthetic polymer, or other, are sometimes but not always laid down, poured, sprayed, or applied by the hand as an extension or non-extension of the wrist, elbow, arm, shoulder, hip, body, outer-body, aura, transcended-self, future-self, or by proxy with either a brush, tool, or other, onto a solid or canvas surface in either multiple or single opaque or transparent layers or strokes resulting in a tangible visual object manifest in the physical dimension as having weight, height, depth, mass, and occupying an amount or volume of time and likewise resulting in an equal to, greater than, or less than physical, psychological, or spiritual impact of understood or non-understood ethereal consequences within an inverse unquantifiable psychic dimension. The conception, execution, and result will or won't be quantifiable by subsets of verbal language, written or spoken, which may or may not contain specialized terminology.

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... SILVER GELATIN PRINTS 1989-1999 A Collection of gelatin silver prints made from photograms, handmade negatives, and experimental darkroom photographic processes. Mother Selenium toned silver gelatin print toned silver gelatin print toned silver gelatin print Selenium toned silver gelatin print 7x9 toned silver gelatin print toned silver gelatin print Selenium toned silver gelatin print 7x9 toned silver gelatin print prismacolor on toned silver gelatin print toned silver gelatin print sepia toned silver gelatin print toned silver gelatin print toned silver gelatin print toned silver gelatin print Selenium toned silver gelatin print 7x9 1/1

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... SOLVERMATH PHASE ONE - FEBRUARY 24, 2023 TWO THINGS CRACK IN HALF FEBRUARY 20, 2023 RPI OPEN STUDIO DECEMBER 2022 LISTENING MEDIUMS OCTOBER 2022 RINGING IN EARS OCTOBER 2022 LIVESTREAM JULY 2022 PSYCHIC SELF DEFENSE DECEMBER 2020 - GIANT WOODEN STAKE FOR KILLING ENERGETIC VAMPIRES IMAGINED PERFORMANCE STORYTIME WITH IV CASTELLANOS PARA\\EL PERFORMANCE SPACE FEBRUARY 2021 WHAT THE BODY KNOWS AUGUST 2020 MOSS ROCK CAGE APRIL 2020 TEN THOUSAND OBJECTIVES MARCH 2020 INTERVIEW BY LINDA MARY MONTANO FEBRUARY 2020 VOICES & CHOICES - THE EAR - BROOKLYN, NY AUGUST 2019 REMARKABLE NEW LOCATIONS - CX SILVER GALLERY - BRATTLEBORO, VT JUNE 2019 ILLUMINATING INTANGIBLES - PARA\\EL PERFORMANCE SPACE - BROOKLYN MARCH 2019 SHAPE OF A FEELING 2018-PRESENT SEEMRIPPER - ELIZABETH FOUNDATION - NYC OCTOBER 2018 LANDLINES - CX SILVER GALLERY - BRATTLEBORO, VT AUGUST 2018 WE CAN'T TELL WHAT WE'RE DOING - HiLO GALLERY - CATSKILL, NY AUGUST 2018 NEW SITUATIONS - THREE PHASE CENTER - STONE RIDGE, NY JUNE 2018 WHISTLE PORTRAITS - HiLO GALLERY - CATSKILL, NY JUNE 2018 FORCE YOURSELF TO BE GOOD - PANOPLY PERFORMANCE LAB - BROOKLYN, NY MAY 2018 CITIZEN PARTICIPATION WITH FEMINIST ART GROUP AT ABC NO RIO / BULLET SPACE IN NYC MAY 2018 HYMN WARP TRANSDUCER AT BEDSTOCK - NINE HERKIMER IN BROOKLYN APRIL 2018 PIANO PORTRAITS - HiLO GALLERY - CATSKILL, NY FEBRUARY 2018

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... RINGING IN EARS OCTOBER 2022

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... THE BODY DESCRIBES ITSELF An in-progress painting series started August 2020 by Nina Isabelle. ​ My Grandmother designed leather gaskets used to strap prosthetic limbs onto amputees. Being an athlete and bodyworker, this series of paintings is an inquiry into what the body knows of its own shape and where might this knowledge come from. This is a study to learn how my own body might describe itself with line and paint. ​ Oil on canvas sizes range from 36 - 60 inches Inquire here for details and prices ​

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... THE HYMN WARP TRANSDUCER The Hymn Warp Transducer was performed as part of Paul McMahon's Woodstock Invitational for The Bedstock / 👁❤️🦄 Exhibition. ​ 9 Herkimer Place in Brooklyn, NY APRIL 15, 2018 ​ Concept & Performance: Nina Isabelle / Slide Guitar: Ever Peacock / Vocals: Abacus Haste / Rhythm: Simon Ample / Documentation: Amelia Iaia. ​ Using mouths, machines and tools to convert internal physical sound qualities into noisy output and a visual heap, Appalachian Abacus Haste melds converted hymns with Ever Peacock’s spooky loop-slide guitar sounds and Simon Ampel's rhythms while Nina Isabelle frames the operation in a warped slipshod suffocation structure. ​ Hymn Warp Transducer Concept & Performance: Nina Isabelle / Slide Guitar: Ever Peacock / Vocals: Abacus Haste / Rhythm: Simon Ample / 2D Art: Paul McMahon / Documentation: Amelia Iaia Hymn Warp Transducer, Nina Isabelle Concept & Performance: Nina Isabelle / Slide Guitar: Ever Peacock / Vocals: Abacus Haste / Rhythm: Simon Ample / 2D Art: Paul McMahon / Documentation: Amelia Iaia Hymn Warp Transducer Concept & Performance: Nina Isabelle / Slide Guitar: Ever Peacock / Vocals: Abacus Haste / Rhythm: Simon Ample / 2D Art: Paul McMahon / Documentation: Amelia Iaia Hymn Warp Transducer, Nina Isabelle Concept & Performance: Nina Isabelle / Slide Guitar: Ever Peacock / Vocals: Abacus Haste / Rhythm: Simon Ample / 2D Art: Paul McMahon / Documentation: Amelia Iaia Hymn Warp Transducer Concept & Performance: Nina Isabelle / Slide Guitar: Ever Peacock / Vocals: Abacus Haste / Rhythm: Simon Ample / 2D Art: Paul McMahon / Documentation: Amelia Iaia Hymn Warp Transducer Concept & Performance: Nina Isabelle / Slide Guitar: Ever Peacock / Vocals: Abacus Haste / Rhythm: Simon Ample / 2D Art: Paul McMahon / Documentation: Amelia Iaia Hymn Warp Transducer Concept & Performance: Nina Isabelle / Slide Guitar: Ever Peacock / Vocals: Abacus Haste / Rhythm: Simon Ample / 2D Art: Paul McMahon / Documentation: Amelia Iaia Hymn Warp Transducer Concept & Performance: Nina Isabelle / Slide Guitar: Ever Peacock / Vocals: Abacus Haste / Rhythm: Simon Ample / 2D Art: Paul McMahon / Documentation: Amelia Iaia Hymn Warp Transducer, Nina Isabelle Concept & Performance: Nina Isabelle / Slide Guitar: Ever Peacock / Vocals: Abacus Haste / Rhythm: Simon Ample / 2D Art: Paul McMahon / Documentation: Amelia Iaia Show More

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... Nina Isabelle Opening at HiLo CATSKILL, NY ​ MAY 2017 Nina Isabelle, with her signature gusto, will be presenting an evening of intrigue, education, and hullabaloo. Arm wrestling, The Overconfident Autodidact (performed by Erik Hokanson,) a tea party performance by Valerie Sharp, a public interview with the questioner another performance artist (Matthew Gioia,) and two documentary screenings- The Eucharist Machine and Time Travel Research Documentary.. Nina Isabelle's installation will be at HiLo from now until June 5. It can be viewed M-F 7am-2pm and Sat & Sun 9am - 4pm until May 3rd after which time the hours will be M-Tu 7-2, W-Th 7 -4, Fri 7am-12am, Sat 7-12am, Sun 9am - 10pm

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... THE PAIN PROJECT MARCH 2015 The Pain Project revisits eight physical injuries and is meant as an exploration of where pain is held in the physical body and how it changes with time. Each piece was made by applying paint to paper using the affected body parts. 3rd Metacarpal of Left Hand , 44x36, tempera paint on paper Broken 3rd Metacarpal of Lett Hand: When I was in 3rd grade I broke the 3rd metacarpal on my left hand doing a back-handspring on the trampoline at The Nittany Gymnastics School in State College, PA. Initially I thought that I had just cracked my knuckle in a painful way but later that day when I was asked by my instructor to do a glide kip on the bars I noticed that there was a sharp pain in my hand. My instructor assumed that I was lying in order to get out of class. I felt conflicted by her accusation, so I tried to swing from the bars again but it was still painful. Was I imagining it? Maybe I just hated doing gymnastics? I began to question my perception of pain within my physical body, I couldn’t tell if I was hurt. That night I told my Mom that I thought I had hurt my hand. She said she would take me to have an x-ray in the morning, but my Dad told her it was not broken, there wasn’t enough swelling, to leave me alone and it would be fine. They fought about it but she took me anyway and it turned out to be broken. They wrapped it up with a plaster cast. Frontalis Bone , 44x36, tempera paint on paper Multiple Concussions: Due to skateboarding and snowboarding I have been knocked unconscious several times. Once I hung up and fell to my head on a mini-ramp and was knocked out for several seconds. When I opened my eyes a man who was there said “Don’t move, I’m going to get your Dad.” I didn’t move. When the man came back he said, “Your Dad says to get up, that you’ll be fine.” The first time I dropped in on a vert ramp everyone told me, “Make sure you lean forward!” I dove from the top of the 12 foot ramp to the bottom, landing head first. I felt dizzy and was giddy but thought it would be a good idea if I tried again. Everyone was yelling “just sit down, don’t get up!” I tried again. On the way home I felt nauseous, my friend had to drive, I threw up on the side of the road. The worst time was when I dropped in on an 7 foot quarter pipe that went onto an asphalt street course. My wheel ran into a piece of gravel and it caused my board to stop rolling, I fell right onto the front of my head. Right in my hairline, directly above my right eye, a large lump instantly grew straight out of my skull, like when cartoon characters get hit with a bat. I had a lump that was as tall as a spool of thread sticking straight out of my head, like a horn! I couldn’t stop laughing, time was distorted, I was delirious. The person I was with took me to the E.R. I had a concussion, they said to wake me up every two hours. The lump turned to dark colors, and then eventually drained into both my eye sockets. I had two black eyes, like a raccoon. I was in Art school at the time, my painting teacher took me aside and asked if I was experiencing domestic violence, he was convinced that my boyfriend was beating me, I couldn’t stop laughing. My skull is indented in that spot. To this day If I touch it with my finger my heart starts racing and my throat clenches shut and it becomes hard to breath. Right Hip , 44x36, tempera paint on paper Multiple contusions on right thigh, inferior lateral aspect of the greater trochanter of femur : At age 14 I was doing a balance beam trick called a Gainer Layout Step, where you sort of fling yourself up in the air and do a no-handed flip and land on one foot. I missed my landing foot and landed on the lateral aspect of my thigh resulting in a giant black and blue mark. Shortly after that I was required to have a physical for school, the nurses saw my bruises and asked if I “had a happy home life.” They sent me to the school counselor who asked me if I drank or used drugs or if I had been exposed to domestic violence. She didn’t believe my answer, that I had “fallen off a balance beam.” Many years later, I was doing a 50/50 grind around a bowl corner on my skateboard, and when I went to go back in my back trucks hung up on the coping, causing me to slam into the bottom of the 5 foot deep bowl with full force, directly onto my right hip. It swelled up instantly, looking like an enormous raspberry scone stuck to my thigh. Blood and yellow fluid began to push out of my pores and flow down my leg. I’d wake up with the bed sheets stuck to my thigh each night, eventually there was a scab the size of my entire hand. My thigh was swollen fat and wiggly like it was full of jello. I couldn’t put on pants and had to wear skirts for weeks, I had an unbelievably huge and disgusting scabby, black-and-blue thigh. To this day, over 20 years later, I still have a lump of scar tissue the size of a small lemon inside my lateral thigh. It is still surprisingly painful to touch. I call it my “perma-bruise.” Lateral Malleolus of Right Fibula , 44x36, tempera paint on paper Undiscovered Broken Lateral Malleolus of the Right Fibula : I had sprained my right ankle several times doing gymnastics, it usually took 3-4 week to feel completely better. The usual protocol involved sticking my foot in a bucket of ice water several times a day, continuing to try to walk on it so that I wouldn’t loose mobility, and wrapping it tightly with athletic tape so that I could get back to training as soon as possible. I had been through this injury several times. When I was 15 I took up skateboarding instead of gymnastics. One time I dropped in off of a ledge that went to a bank and my front right foot rolled under. I wound up landing on top of my crumpled foot with all of my weight from several feet in the air. It was so painful, I was frozen and unable to make a sound or move. Nobody in the crowded building recognized that I was injured. I slowly and quietly moved myself across the concrete floor toward the exit and crawled on one knee with my ankle in the air, very delicately and smoothly, down the hill to where the athletic trainers were. They looked at my ankle and said I would need to get an x-ray, then I was given a ride home. I called my Dad, who said “No, you don’t need an x-ray, it’s probably just a bad sprain, just ice it.” 4 weeks had gone by and I was still not able to put much weight on my foot. I kept trying to walk normally, and just wrapped it up tightly with athletic tape. It was over 2 months before I could walk without pain. My boss and other people implied that I was faking an injury for special attention, so I made a point to conceal my pain. When I was 36 I sprained my ankle again while bouldering. I had it x-rayed and they said, “It’s not broken now, but we can see where it has been broken previously in several places.” My ankle has never recovered from this, it is extremely sensitive and I can’t allow anything to touch it, the lightest tap makes me yelp. Dragging it across the paper for this project was excruciating, I almost cried. This injury is 18 years old and has not left my body yet. Occipital Bone , 44x36, tempera paint on paper Bad Neck Injury: I’m not sure what happened to my neck. I over-rotated a double back flip on the trampoline and was about to land on the back of my head. My friend dove toward me to stop my rotation before I landed but his fist wound up right in the back of my neck when I landed with my feet crumpling over the top of my body. My entire head and neck were tingling and making crackling sounds, it felt like fluid had been blasted up my nose. I crawled off the trampoline and took myself home. I took some Advil, put a bag of frozen peas on my neck and tried to sleep. I couldn't move for days, the phone had been ringing but I couldn't get to it. I finally crawled to the kitchen 2 days later to eat, but wound up on the floor in pain. I made an appointment with a chiropractor but he needed to see an x-ray. I didn't have insurance so I just waited for it to get better. I have a lump the size of a walnut at base of my occipital bone on my right side. It hasn’t gone away yet, sometimes I have sharp, shooting pains if I turn my head a certain way. Contusions on Lungs , 44x36, tempera paint on paper Contusions on Lungs, Cracked Tooth: When I was 16 I was snowboarding on an icy slope with my friend. Something happened and I wound up in the air face-first and landed on my chest and face. I knocked the wind out of myself and banged the front of my face and head onto the ice. I started laughing really hard, blood gurgled up from my throat and sprayed onto the snow, then I spat a tooth into my mitten, I couldn’t stop laughing. My friend asked if I was okay and I couldn’t stop laughing, I said that I was okay, but he took me to the hospital. They x-rayed my lungs because of the blood coming out of my throat, it had a contusion. The next day I went to the dentist and he made me a new tooth out of putty, I still have it. Lateral Deltoid 44x36, tempera paint on paper Separated Right Shoulder: When I was 16 I was skateboarding on a 5 foot mini ramp inside of a metal building near my home. My back trucks hung up on the coping and I fell to the flat bottom landing on my shoulder. I tried to leave the building but couldn't open the door because I needed to hold my right arm onto my body with my left arm. I tried for a while to open the door with my foot, or to unlatch and slide the barn doors open with my legs. Eventually I managed to open the door and walked home. My parents were upset with me for being late for dinner. My Dad gave me a sling for my arm, and we tied my arm to my torso for several days until it tightened back onto my body. Sacrum / Coccyx , 44x36, tempera paint on paper Possible broken or subluxed coccyx or sacrum: My skateboard slid out from under me and I landed on my tail bone on a metal pipe. I was able to get home and go to bed. In the morning I was in so much pain, I couldn't stand upright. I walked slowly, bent over all the way, to the bathroom, then back to my bed. My parents didn’t know I was hurt. They kept yelling for me to “Make sure you don’t miss dinner at camp, we don’t have any food at the house!” I couldn’t get out of bed, I was so hungry. I never saw a doctor.

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... C O D E February 22, 2016 In response to Apple’s battle with the FBI over a federal order to unlock the iPhone of a mass shooter, C O D E looks at the differences between humans and machines and the difference between how these systems reveal or encrypt data through programming and intention. ​

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... PIANO PORTRAITS ​ By Linda Mary Montano with Nina Isabelle, & Jennifer Zackin HiLo Catskill, NY February 11, 2018 ​ During these dangerous / confusing / armageddonned times, we are all looking for connection, understanding and warmth. The three of us are committed to providing public art medicine. ART=LIFE=ART. For our PIANO PORTRAITS event at HiLo, we invite audience member-collaborators to sit in a chair on stage to receive a public art healing. Linda Mary Montano will improvise your piano portrait, Nina Isabelle will interpret you through action / movement, and Jennifer Zackin will macrame. Using knots and rope, sunglasses, costumes, blindfolds, action, movement, and sound, we will publicly heal ourselves and you. ART HEALS! ​ Photos by Adolfo Ibanez Ayerve and Carrie Dashow ​ Piano Portraits at HiLo Piano Portraits at HiLo with Linda Mary Montano, Nina Isabelle, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Adolfo Ibanez Ayerve Piano Portraits at HiLo Piano Portraits at HiLo with Linda Mary Montano, Nina Isabelle, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Adolfo Ibanez Ayerve Piano Portraits at HiLo Piano Portraits at HiLo with Linda Mary Montano, Nina Isabelle, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Adolfo Ibanez Ayerve Piano Portraits at HiLo Piano Portraits at HiLo with Linda Mary Montano, Nina Isabelle, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Adolfo Ibanez Ayerve Piano Portraits at HiLo Piano Portraits at HiLo with Linda Mary Montano, Nina Isabelle, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Adolfo Ibanez Ayerve Piano Portraits at HiLoa_3 Piano Portraits at HiLo with Linda Mary Montano, Nina Isabelle, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Adolfo Ibanez Ayerve Piano Portraits at HiLo Piano Portraits at HiLo with Linda Mary Montano, Nina Isabelle, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Adolfo Ibanez Ayerve Piano Portraits at HiLo Piano Portraits at HiLo with Linda Mary Montano, Nina Isabelle, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Adolfo Ibanez Ayerve Piano Portraits at HiLo Piano Portraits at HiLo with Linda Mary Montano, Nina Isabelle, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Adolfo Ibanez Ayerve Piano Portraits at HiLo Piano Portraits at HiLo with Linda Mary Montano, Nina Isabelle, and Jennifer Zackin. Photo by Adolfo Ibanez Ayerve LINDA MARY MONTANO is a seminal figure in contemporary feminist performance art and her work since the mid 1960s has been critical in the development of video by, for, and about women. Attempting to dissolve the boundaries between art and life, Montano continues to actively explore her art/life through shared experience, role adoption, and intricate life altering ceremonies, some of which last for seven or more years. Her artwork is starkly autobiographical and often concerned with personal and spiritual transformation. Montano’s influence is wide ranging – she has been featured at museums including The New Museum in New York, MOCA San Francisco and the ICA in London. www.lindamontano.com NINA ISABELLE is a process-based multidisciplinary artist working with action and perception. She works to deconstruct sensory input to the extent that meaning becomes shifted and interpretations become a phenomena of psychic imprint. By incorporating physical movement, modified technology, art and non-art objects, her work builds systems of action designed to intuit site-specific information- tethering the collective, personal, and regional relative narratives that drive the performance space machine toward trajectories of new perception, belief, and possibilities. Referencing the inability of communication which is used to visualize reality, the failure of dialogue, the dissonance between form and content, as well as the shortcomings of literal language, Isabelle pushes material and information past the point of recognition in a way that forces a shift in meaning, revealing new information that can transform and challenge the limits of material, perception, and belief. Her work has been exhibited at The San Diego Art Institute, The Bangkok Underground Film Festival, HiLo Catskill, the CICA Museum in South Korea, and most recently, The Mothership in Woodstock, NY. www.ninaisabelle.com JENNIFER ZACKIN has been integrating public art, sculpture, installation, performance, collaboration, ceremony, photography, video, collage and drawing into acts of reverence and reciprocity for the past 14 years. Whether wrapping trees in patterns of brightly colored rope, growing medicinal herbs in a public garden for public use, offering large masses of rose petals to oceans and lakes, creating absorbent tentacles ("hair booms") out of salvaged materials to aid in the clean-up efforts of toxic spills, Zackin seeks to engage and create community in her process, bringing art and ritual into everyday life. Every act is an exploration of exchange, communion, performance, skill-sharing and mark-making. Writing in a cataloque essay about her work Lori Waxman states; “Jennifer Zackin has worked with Rose Petals, Little Plastic Cowboys, pre-Columbian symbols, bright handmade pom-poms, cheap mass-produced posters, coca leaves, and her grandfathers old Super-8 home movies. How she weaves them into rhythmic, often meditative forms depends in great part on the underlying pattern that she is able to detect and orchestrate among her diverse materials.” Her work has been exhibited in national and international museums, including the Whitney Museum of American Art NY, Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art CT, Spertus Museum - Chicago IL, Rose Museum MA, the Wexner Center for the Arts OH, Contemporary Art Museum - Houston TX, The Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Høvikodden - Norway, Institute of Contemporary Art - Boston MA and the Zacheta National Art Gallery - Warsaw, Poland. Commissions include Governors Island NYC with LMCC, Katonah Art Museum NY, Socrates Sculpture Park LIC - Queens NY and the Berkshire Botanical Gardens - Stockbridge, MA. She is the recipient of fellowships and residencies, including Factory Direct at Pinchbeck Rose Farm, Art Omi, Atlantic Center for the Arts and the Skowhegan School for Painting and Sculpture. www.jenniferzackin.com Event photo: Carrie Dashow

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... LIVESTREAM NINA ISABELLE & ADRIANA MAGAÑA PERFORM DURING UPSTATE ART WEEKEND AT JENNIFER ZACKIN'S STUDIO IN WOODSTOCK, NY JULY 2022 Photo by Jennifer Zackin

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... LANDLINES Performance by Nina Isabelle & Jennifer Zackin at CX Silver Gallery in Brattleboro, VT. August 26, 2018 An interactive type of immersion-therapy, Landlines invites viewers & participants to make their own meaning out of actions and gestures happening within a sea of dissonance. How do we cultivate the cultural phenomena of communication while agendas of power and dominance try to hijack our semiotic proclivity with fake news and ad campaigns designed to entrench us in divisive notions of entitlement and correctness? When lines of communication become connected to fear, anger, and resentment, how do we clear and reground them to empathy and grace? ​

LISTENING MEDIUMS OCTOBER 2022 HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More...

HOME ABOUT PROJECTS THREE PHASE CONTACT SEARCH More... 650 ML. OF LUNG PUSS A seventeen-day artlife performance at Westchester Medical Center's Maria Fareri Children's Hospital in Valhalla, NY December 18, 2019 - January 3, 2020 650 ml. of Lung Puss was a seventeen-day performance initiated by a dire circumstance that ultimately demonstrated a quantum aspect of artlife processes. Influenced by my friend and artlife colleague Linda Mary Montano, the performance inspired a deeper understanding of a performance process that summons elemental energies from a nonlocational power source. These energies exist in a state of quantum superposition and can be programmed using intention, determination, focus, and sacrifice, to transmute pain, suffering, and trauma into tolerance, endurance, resilience, self awareness, control, forgiveness, grace, and gratitude. The performance began on December 18th when I carried my near lifeless and blue 94lb. daughter across a large, dark, silent, windy, and cold parking lot into the hospital's emergency room. The energies that fueled this difficult task were conjured from a deeply derived performative physical power cultivated by all mothers collectively throughout eternal time combined with the tension building from a deadlocked schism between my intuition and the medical authorities. In the past two days, we had been sent home from the emergency room and a pediatrician's office. Meanwhile, my daughter had developed sepsis from Scarlett Fever, Pneumonia, and a pleural effusion in her left lung. Our hospital performance engaged members of our close community, artlife collaborators and colleagues, friends and family, and the larger medical community of ambulance drivers, EMTs, emergency room attendants, nurses,doctors, phlebotomists, surgeons, lab and x-ray technicians, infectious disease specialists, sanitation specialists, medical administrators, and so on. Together, we collectively transformed into an unintentional ensemble performing actions together as our best selves in order to save a child's life. We embodied multiple and often simultaneous roles and embraced the fluctuating spaces between these modes. We performed as mothers, organizers, brothers, partners, distractors, whisperers of encouragement, visitors, tear swallowers, fear fighters, candle lighters, gift givers, keepers of tempers, story book readers, temperature takers, practitioners of patience, hand holders, phone callers, researchers, organizers, group texters, medicine givers, vomit bucket holders, comforters, food providers, errand runners, and healers. On the final day of our hospital performance, Linda texted "rest art!!!" to our group. We were finally able to go home, perform rest, and RESTART. This performance demonstrated that art and life function as entangled dimensions through subtle quantum artlife processes. We learned that approaches effective in art and performance dimensions are also effective in dimensions of life and other realities, and that intentions and actions occurring within one dimension simultaneously reflect, impact, and are made evident in multiple ways throughout multiple dimensions. Engaging with life circumstances through performative art mechanisms allows us to translate the diverse array of creative skills derived from our disciplined artlife practices, (our responsive, intuitive, reflexive, mindful, and conceptual abilities,) into cognitive modes of awareness that inform the new life patterns necessary to thrive as artists in life. Through this post-conceptualizing processes, we gain the ability to sidestep linear chronologies and reframe the concepts of our engagements post-performatively as a way to articulate with the personal mechanisms of awareness and control necessary to make meanings and choices that fortify our collective artlives in new and beneficial ways. List of Performers: Paul DeVincent, Ernest Goodmaw, Sylvia Hallibelle, Chris Hallman, Erik Hokanson, Eric Hurliman, Ulysses Hurliman, Bg Isabelle, Ed Isabelle, Kate Isabelle, Lou Isabelle, Louie Isabelle-DeVincent, Margie Isabelle, Nina Isabelle, Brian McCorkle, Jill McDermid, Paul McMahon, Linda Mary Montano, Ever Peacock, Mor Pipman, Valerie Sharp, Maureen Sharp, Luke Stence, Jennifer Zackin, and Havarah Zawaluk, many anonymous medical professionals, hospital workers, elementary school teachers, school nurses, community mothers and children.