Steven Durland, an artist, writer, editor, and cultural organizer, passed away on March 11 at 75, following a brief illness. His death was confirmed by his long-time collaborator and life partner, Linda Frye Burnham, in Saxapahaw, North Carolina, where he had lived for 30 years.
Born in 1951 in Long Beach, California, Durland grew up in South Dakota. He spent his early years in Massachusetts and New York before returning to the West Coast in the early 1980s. In 1993, he and Burnham moved to Frog Pond Farm in Saxapahaw, sharing their home with dogs, cats, chickens, and geese.
Durland gained recognition as the editor of High Performance magazine, which Burnham founded in 1978. He served as editor from 1986 to 1994, during which time the magazine highlighted the work of numerous artists, including Nancy Buchanan, Carolee Schneemann, Paul McCarthy, Suzanne Lacy, and the late Ulysses Jenkins.
Before becoming an editor, Durland trained in ceramics, earning a BFA from the University of South Dakota and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. During this time, he delved into performance and mail art. His letter from Amherst appeared in the fourth issue of Burnham’s High Performance magazine in December 1978, commending it as a valuable service to artists. That issue also featured his 1978 performance “Win Defeat/BID FOR POWER,” a whimsical contest driven by dice and trivia. His 1982 performance “Death and Taxis” was documented in the summer 1982 issue.
Durland actively participated in mail art and independent publishing, exchanging correspondence through international postal networks and creating small printed works. In April 1980, he launched Tacit, a micro-newspaper in postcard format. Burnham later invited him to contribute Tacit as a recurring column in High Performance, starting with issue 16 in 1981–’82. In introducing it, Burnham highlighted his unique blend of humor and satire on social and art-world matters.
Durland first encountered Burnham in 1981 during her visit to New York. At that time, he was employed as a computer typesetter, having acquired skills in compugraphics—an early digital phototypesetting technique—while in Massachusetts. He later utilized this expertise in editorial publishing after freelancing in New York’s commercial print industry. Burnham once recalled in a 2007 interview with curator and historian Jenni Sorkin, “So here I met this handsome young man, incredibly bright and friendly, a performance artist who knew how to set type. [laughs] Take it away!”
In 1983, Durland relocated to Los Angeles and began collaborating with Burnham on High Performance, first as managing editor and later as editor in 1986. His editorial vision emphasized performance art as a “generalist” practice, encouraging interdisciplinarity and broad research.
Under Durland’s leadership, the magazine navigated the cultural debates of the time while avoiding an isolationist view on art. High Performance broadened its focus to include community-based and socially engaged art, all the while upholding a dedication to documentation and innovation. He described the magazine as “a journalistic home for new, unrecognized and innovative work in the arts,” advocating for diverse contexts where art could flourish. He also launched thematic issues, like ¡Nuevo Latino!, which featured Chicana artist Diane Gamboa’s paper fashions photographed by Daniel Joseph Martinez, and highlighted Latino arts communities in Los Angeles and beyond. By its final issue in 1997, High Performance had become a vital archive of transient art practices that might have otherwise faded.
The ethos of High Performance extended beyond the printed page into physical spaces. In Santa Monica, feminist art studios evolved into the 18th Street Arts Center through the efforts of Burnham, Durland, and Susanna Bixby Dakin. Following this, Burnham and Tim Miller, a performance artist, established Highways Performance Space, a collaborative hub during the HIV/AIDS crisis. In 1995, Durland and Burnham co-founded Art in the Public Interest, a community-based art nonprofit inspired by art historian Arlene Raven’s 1993 book. Together, they edited The Citizen Artist: 20 Years of Art in the Public Arena (1998), expressing gratitude to the artists who shaped their work.
Throughout his career, Durland remained devoted to art as a civic practice. He spent a year in the mid-1970s as a community artist in Madison, South Dakota, under the South Dakota Arts Council’s Artist in the Schools program, funded by the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act. He described this period, working out of a former jewelry store on Main Street, as “the best job I ever had,” where he created art, taught classes, and engaged with the community.
At Frog Pond Farm, Durland crafted artworks inspired by the local environment, incorporating natural materials such as bark, leaves, eggs, and beeswax with digital processes, often enlarging them to monumental proportions. In 2015, he and Burnham created “Woodland Banners Poetry Walk,” a permanent outdoor installation combining printed banners with Burnham’s poems based on artist quotes. Durland also operated Bourbon, Dogs & Art, a yurt studio and gallery on the farm where much of his work was displayed.
In January, Highways Performance Space showcased Inflation Gauge, a solo exhibition of Durland’s work, coinciding with the launch of High Performance: A 2-Year Conference (2025–2027). This initiative, a collaboration among Highways, 18th Street Arts Center, the Performance Art Museum, Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions, and the Getty Research Institute, includes various programs such as monthly virtual and in-person reading groups.
In the press release for Inflation Gauge, Durland reflected on an interview from 1986 with Marina Abramović and Ulay for High Performance, where they described an artist’s life as progressing through phases: warrior, priest, lover, and gardener. Durland saw himself and Burnham in this final phase, dedicated to nurturing and preserving.
When asked by Sorkin if he considered himself a tastemaker, Durland responded that he saw himself more as a “facilitator.”Â
“There’s things we could do that nobody else could do,” he commented, likening the arts to infrastructure. “And if we did them, then the whole system benefited.” This community-focused approach characterized his life’s work. He is survived by Linda Frye Burnham, their dogs Gracie and Oliver, his siblings Nancy Tregaskes, Lori Manske, Patty Bassett, and Tom Durland, and his stepchildren Jill, Tony, and Andy Burnham.
