WINONA, Minn.

This month, Winona artist Billy X. Curmano will take a nap.

Not just any old nap.

Curmano plans on snoozing for 24 hours in a row. On a bed of nails. Beneath a blanket of tiny tacks.

Potty breaks acceptable. Snoring encouraged.

Over the course of his day-long nap, Curmano will share a siesta with most of the world’s 7 billion inhabitants, and call attention to how hard it is to rest nowadays.

It’s always a good time for a nap, Curmano believes, but our frenetic society doesn’t see it that way. That’s too bad, because it could save serious energy in the form of switched-off electronics. The 24- Hour Worldwide Rolling Nap, as it’s officially called, is the performance artist’s latest in a line of what he likes to call cheap tricks — but they’ll be art when he’s dead.

If the whole thing sounds a bit crazy, maybe that’s because it is.

But Curmano doesn’t shy away from crazy — he welcomes it. The 60-something-year-old has swum the length of the Mississippi River to raise awareness of water pollution, been buried alive for three days, used 13 vials of his own blood in a performance against war, fasted for 42 days in the Mojave Desert, and done countless other strange and wonderful things.

They function as artwork, as interruptions in the routine of everyday life, as milestones in Curmano’s own creative process, as alarm bells, as ways to cope after the Vietnam War, as hilarious entertainment, as first steps on the road to societal change.

Quieter side

Curmano has a quieter side, too. When he is between large projects, Curmano dreams up fantasies, goes for long walks, and makes things at his Witoka studio. He holds free jazz jam sessions with his friends and creates his Billy Curmano Fan Club newsletter, The Fandango. He writes a blog post every day about climate change. He draws a quarterly cartoon for the Vietnam Veterans Against the War. He shows up in Winona on Friday afternoons to talk with other artists at Ed’s No Name Bar.

Through it all, the strange and the not-so-strange, there’s a creative exuberance at work, a playful irony, and an ongoing investigation into the things many people take for granted.

Curmano’s art has an opinion, and the artist is willing to follow it wherever it goes.

He’s a small man whose energy seems to be always on the brink of overflowing. Tousled gray curls dangle over his forehead, and a gray mustache and goatee trace their path around his mouth and down his neck. His eyes are brown, and direct behind his wire-rimmed glasses, his grin crooked and frequent.

He wears faded jeans and old sweatshirts as his everyday costume, but he’s been known to adopt much stranger clothing, including, but not limited to, a straitjacket, a three-piece suit, a hooded bathrobe, a lab coat, a loud blue rain suit, and plain navy blue swimming trunks.

His voice is a pleasant tenor. His hands are small and strong.

When his phone rings, he automatically begins to walk back and forth with it, walking and talking, the words and ideas coming as easily as the steps.

He prefers his brandy warm in the wintertime.

To understand Billy Curmano the artist, where he came from and what he does and believes, the best place to start the journey is in his basement, which is part workshop, part recording studio, part reading room, part gallery.

The place overflows with art so much that otherwise ordinary objects, like cereal boxes, approach new levels of importance.

Although many of Curmano’s artworks are performances, and therefore don’t hang easily on walls or rest on tabletops, Curmano is an artist of multiple media.

Sculptures dating back to his college years occupy space next to more recent creations. There’s the “Rocking Boots” sculpture, which is exactly what it sounds like, so that when you are too tired to sit down, at least your boots can relax.

Nearby, leaning against the wall, Curmano has the coffin he was buried in for his “Performance for the Dead” in 1983. Decorated canoe paddles from his 11-year-long “Swimming the River” project hang above the studio door in a flattened X shape. The walls are covered in paintings and drawings, some by Curmano, others by his friends.

The upstairs is even more cluttered. Winter sun slants into the space, lighting the worn rug in the center of the room, unhindered by art less likely to cast a shadow, since much of it hangs more or less demurely on wood-paneled walls.

There’s a leather wallet on which Curmano carved, with a sharp object he managed to keep, the view from inside his very first jail cell. A painting titled “Female Form for My Attic,” which looks like a brown paper package, with the message, “I painted a picture of Colleen and wrapped it in brown paper. No one has ever seen it, but you know of it,” scrawled across it.

There’s really a picture in there, but nobody has ever seen it, Curmano said. And now you know of it.

Physical evidence

In a room off the kitchen, kept shut because it doesn’t have heating vents, Curmano keeps physical evidence of his bigger projects: A globe and vials crusted with Curmano’s dried blood from a war protest piece; keys to various cities from his river swim; a bed of nails he made and lay in for a performance titled, “How do You Sleep at Night?”

He’ll use the bed of nails again for his Rolling Nap.

As such, he’s making himself a set of Kevlar-lined pajamas.

If you’re used to art being neatly labeled and arranged in glass cases or gilded frames, Curmano’s art might upset you.

That’s OK.

You wouldn’t be the first.

And if you ask any artist or art appreciator who has lived in Winona for a while if they know of Billy Curmano, you’ll likely get a nod and a chuckle in response, and a good story.

The first conversation

Take John Paulson for one. The jazz musician met Curmano more than 30 years ago and still remembers their first conversation.

Paulson had just started teaching full-time at Saint Mary’s University when he got a phone call from Curmano, who was politely looking for musicians to play at his live burial.

“I’m sitting there thinking this guy is completely nuts, and I don’t want anything to do with him,” Paulson told the Winona Daily News.

As it turns out, Curmano is not alone in the presumed-completelynuts category. There’s a whole artistic movement there with him called performance art, with roots dating back to Italy in the early 1900s, when a group of Futurists climbed to the top of a clock tower and showered offensive leaflets on a crowd below.

Performance art came of age after World War II, its definitive characteristics being that it happened in time and space, and that it involved a confrontation of ideas. Like much of the art in the 20th century, it stopped making sense and stopped following social mores, preferring awkward nervous laughter from an audience rather than civilized clapping.

Martha Wilson is director and founder of Franklin Furnace in New York, an institution dedicated to avant-garde and performance art, including several of Curmano’s works over the years.

Wilson said among performance artists, Curmano is not unique in his persistent focus on social issues, since that’s integral to the genre. But his endurance is exemplary; throughout his career, he has carried out long, complicated performances that take lots of preparation and planning.

The Mississippi River swim alone took more than 250 swimming days, spread out over 11 summers.

“It’s enough time that you understand this is a serious endeavor,” Wilson said.

And while he is singularly committed to his work, Curmano makes himself approachable at the same time.

“He’s funny, too,” Wilson said, adding, “They’re hilarious, absurdist ideas.”

Another standout element of Curmano’s work is his attention to documenting performances for future reference.

For larger works, like “Swimming the River,” Curmano did reperformances, acting out the highlight reel of his swim in a plastic kiddie pool for audiences in Milwaukee and Madison in a work called “Muck Minnow the Gill Boy.” He has also turned three of his projects into documentary films.

Curmano’s documentation of his performances, in keeping with the development of technology to do so, caught the attention of European artist and publisher Thomas Geiger in 2011.

Geiger, who lives in Belgium, said in an email that he was so impressed with the relevance of Curmano’s work that he and Austrian artist Astrid Seme decided to create a book about it, “Futurism’s Bastard Son,” which they published in 2012.

“Nowadays artists focus more and more on political, economical and ecological issues, and Billy handles exactly (these) topics with irony and gallows humor,” Geiger said.

“I think this is also one of the reasons why his work is so contemporary and internationally recognized.”

So while Curmano’s works might appear silly or fanatical from the outside, they’re motivated by an understanding that in order to influence the world, sometimes you have to interrupt it.

Curmano said he lets his art speak because sometimes it’s the only thing that can, really.

As for Paulson, the jazz musician who turned down Curmano’s funeral invitation, he hadn’t heard the last of Curmano. Over the years he has performed as accompaniment for Curmano’s re-performances, and recorded one of Curmano’s sound art albums in his studio.

He’s come to respect the radically unencumbered stance Curmano has toward art, life, music — really, anything.

“He has a courageous approach to expressing himself and it doesn’t seem to be limited to a particular instrument,” Paulson said. “He just goes for it.”

Born in Milwaukee

Curmano was born in Milwaukee to artistic parents. The way he tells it, his father was an Italian and his mother wasn’t supposed to marry an Italian.

That was a common enough story at the time, but Curmano’s mother was an open-minded artist and unconventional thinker. Her four sons were all creative.

Curmano’s oldest brother ran a radio station from the basement.

His second-oldest brother designed fireworks.

His third-oldest brother was a taxidermist.

All the while, his mother was cooking vats of spaghetti sauce and practicing Hawaiian hula dancing, and his father had the more traditional job as a window trimmer.

Curmano maintained a healthy relationship with his mother throughout his career as an artist, even as his projects got more and more ambitious.

“She loved art, and I suspect maybe I was fulfilling some of her fantasies,” Curmano said. He has some of her art on his walls at home, and she has the honored title of “President Ex Officio Perpetuitas” of his fan club.

Curmano’s father was not as enthused about his wilder projects, but Curmano was still his son.

“My dad would say all my stuff was crazy, but then he helped me,” Curmano explained. He has a photograph of himself and his dad making a sculpture together — his dad with a hammer and Curmano with a saw.

The Vietnam War interrupted Curmano’s plans to study art in college. He was in line to be drafted, so he decided to join and get it over with. He was still a teenager when he left for Vietnam, and served just over a year in the jungle until he was injured in an explosion.

He returned home to the military funeral of his best friend from high school.

Deeply wounded by his war experience even after his body healed, Curmano immediately got involved with Vietnam Veterans Against the War and participated in protests. His art is peppered with antiwar messages and a deep respect for wild nature, both of which grew stronger in him as a result of the war.

Curmano studied art at the University of Milwaukee and, amid a raucous college house, created his earlier sculptures.

He found himself escaping to the countryside more and more, and when his friend Reggie McLeod moved out to a ridge near Winona, Curmano followed a few years later. Although he is a frequent traveler, Curmano has made his home in the bluffs ever since.

With the music he plays, McLeod said with a wry grin, it’s probably better that he has few neighbors.

Curmano works alone, but he doesn’t perform alone.

Curmano’s closest friends all have stories of their participation in his performance art pieces. Often done without official sponsorship, the performances aren’t possible without the help of a lot of folks — whether they see themselves as artists or not — taking care of the details and letting Curmano do the work.

Dave Christenson, a doctor in Winona, met Curmano at an exhibition in the early ’80s. In September 1983, he hosted Curmano’s mock jazz funeral on his large front porch.

Christenson also went along on Curmano’s river swim, usually paddling the support boat with him for a week or so each summer.

On that trip, Christenson helped Curmano create barrier creams and a bathing regimen to keep him safe from the chemicals in the water. Together with other volunteers, Christenson followed Curmano, recorded his swim on video, kept him out of danger, and hauled around camping equipment, food, and other necessities.

“A lot of these were not pleasure trips,” Christenson recalled, with a small smile.

But the hard work was only part of it.

“The other part is having a front-row seat at a performance,” Christenson said. He likened each of Curmano’s swimming strokes to a brush stroke.

McLeod, a freelance journalist, wrote several articles about his friend’s adventures, including the swim, despite his own questions about whether Curmano’s work was art.

Curmano wasn’t bothered by such challenges, though his river swim was the topic of several formal debates at art museums and universities throughout the 1990s.

After all, performance art has a long history of disrupting commonly conceived notions of what is and is not art.

For Christenson, whose wife is an artist, Curmano’s work is obviously art, but it’s a kind that gets in people’s faces to make a point.

McLeod agreed on that count.

“His stuff is very publicity-oriented, and that’s part of the performance. That’s part of the art,” McLeod said. “He’s good at making himself bigger — he’s trying to affect communities.”

Curmano’s girlfriend of 12 years, Margarita Baumann, has had a front-row seat in Curmano’s recent performances, from the Anti-Shakespeare Festival to the People’s Climate March.

Come up with ideas

She gladly stands behind the camera to record Curmano’s work, but Baumann’s favorite thing to do is watch Curmano come up with ideas and carry them out no matter how complicated they get, even to the level of the Kevlar pajamas Curmano plans to wear during his nap.

“He sees what’s going on in the environment and the world,” she said of the rationale behind the upcoming Rolling Nap. “He sees how the environment is impacted. He just felt like he had to do something about it, do his share.”

That need to do something is an engine deep inside Curmano.

“I think it’s in him, it’s so strong, that desire to create, and to do things,” Baumann said.

Curmano said his need to create also grows out of his persistent post-traumatic stress from the war, which he deals with every day.

He has been told he probably would not be alive if he didn’t have his art. He always aims to have one more project to do, and his internal energy keeps him creating, doing adventuresome things, going outside and taking long walks.

Curmano’s friends also pointed out the extreme quality of some of his projects. The river beat him up at times and required all kinds of protective measures, and fasting in the desert caused him plenty of physical discomfort.

They’re often hard on his body, these performances, like punishments for the guilt of war. Baumann said she thinks it’s a way for Curmano to work through some of his past.

“I think these extreme projects just help him stay alive,” Baumann said. “It is hard for me, because I can see how it affects him.”

It helps that Curmano is stubborn, with a will to see things through.

He keeps his friendships alive over many years. He keeps himself alive.

He keeps his convictions at the forefront of his art and invites others to consider them.

As he says in “The Search,” his 2011 film:

“Artists often paint their fantasies. I try to live mine.”