Grasping the black and white checkerboard clamshell I first look at the labels on the front board and the spine. Since they are slightly smaller than the squares, the labels are bordered with an alternating black and white line. Opening the clamshell not only reveals the book, but the square of the boards, that is, the overhang. The checkerboard cloth coming around the boards appears as an alternating black and white line on the inside of the boards. Picking up the inch and a half thick fold book I count the inch square black and white blocks of the checkerboard cover. It is six wide by twelve tall. The vertical book opens to a foot square folio. Rather than fully extending the fold book, I view it page by page in the manner of a codex. I go through it at a rapid pace to glimpse at what awaits me. The top and bottom of the pages are bordered with a bold thick black line containing inch wide white dashes, reminiscent of the borders on the clamshell. Even the thread is dotted black and white. I am excited by the on-going revelation of motif and the careful attention to detail. Instead of slowing down, I quicken my pace through the pop- up "Icons", passing over the definition of science at the end. Turning the book over, I find the second part is "Idioms". Now color, previously only background, expands as an element in the pictures. Rather than pop-ups, on this side of the book there are four fold-outs, each extending four pages in length. The format is physical, making use of a double-sided fold book, pop-ups, and fold-outs. I find myself at the end of "Idioms", turning the book over to the other side: "Icons". This viewing is at a slower pace. I pay more attention to detail, instead of merely glimpsing at the book for the mood of the pictures, the tone of the text, and a sense of the graphic design and physical format. As I examine more carefully, I watch to see if those elements which struck me on the first glimpsing are still the strongest for me, whether they seem to be the intended highlights, or only represent my particular interests. I especially enjoy the drawings by O'Banion which extend across a shorter page onto the following page. The drawing is modified by turning the narrower page which removes the left half of the drawing, so that the remainder of the drawing on the following page can be seen in full: a coffee table becomes a chair; a profile of a figure becomes a puddle extending from an overturned bucket. This playfulness allows turning the page to create the drawings, rather than merely sticking art into a blank binding. O'Banion has a sense of the book format. The drawings strike me as very similar to those of another printmaker, Sonia Landy Sheridan, in her first book, Inner Landscape (1969). This also was a study of the universal within the individual. Since Sonia's book is only in two copies, I do not suggest there was an influence, but that in each instance the iconographic depiction of domestic scenes is so elementally strong as to reach an inner level of symbolism: each of these artists depicts profiles of figures filled with energetic lines, floating figures, and windows with blowing curtains. Each draws an outline of a house bordered by beds, chairs, and stairs. Nance O'Banion shows a dismembered hand, palm facing the viewer, with the index finger pointing straight up, touching a medallion of images. The same hand pointing to and touching an eye is a signature of Sonia Sheridan. This is not plagiarism nor even coincidence, but the inevitable result of the study of icons and idioms. Each artist is distilling visual imagery to a commonly shared universal language. As Nance O'Banion says, "...to transcend their individual meanings." This is the strength of both of these first books by two very different artists. Both books explore icons and idioms by means of text as well as pictures. However, Sheridan's use of idioms is not a labored list of word plays; she plays with the words. In a humorous and sometimes risque way, Sheridan's landscape reveals "shoe-trees" and a "house-dick" for double and triple-entendre. O'Banion's listing of compound words as idioms strikes me as heavy and the prefaces as heavy-handed, unnecessary, and didactic. It takes courage for a visual artist to take on prose or poetry. Mixed media, of text and pictures, is very difficult indeed. In her next books, if not humor, I would like to see the playfulness of poetry. O'Banion's text does not dance with the pictures, but is only an attendant. Still, Nance O'Banion has achieved in her first book more than just about anyone I know. I am overwhelmed by the beauty and depth of this work and look forward with eagerness to her next. Keith Smith

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