MONDAY, MARCH 22, 1999

Artist reveals meaning behind abstract work

By John Putman

On-Line Forty-Niner

Everyone hides behind his or her own personal masks, and it is under these layers we find our true selves, multimedia artist Nance O'Banion said in a lecture at Cal State Long Beach on Wednesday.

"I think that we [need to] peel off those layers in an attempt to understand a little bit more about who we are," she said.

O'Banion, a graduate of University of California Berkeley, helped launch the fiber art movement in the 1960s. She began her career creating abstract art forms using textiles, products and books while she was traveling throughout the world.

Moving expressively between the mediums of painting, weaving, handmade paper and fiberglass, O'Banion, who has exhibited her art world wide, turned away from abstraction to pursue "aggressively narrative" art in order to communicate more meaningfully to her audience.

Her piece "Western Flame," consisting of paint, fiberglass, wood and electrical wires, shows a flickering tongue of flames coming out of a pool of blue water.

It was produced at the time of the 1992 Oakland fires which came within four blocks of destroying her home.

"I kept talking about how art and life are all the same, and the more I worked on this narrative stuff the more I began to challenge my private life. I found that the mask slowly was being removed," O'Banion said, who has also collaborated with other artists on a number of exhibited projects.

O'Banion's most recent project is a two-year "visual journey" of salvaged 12-foot high doors which she paints, like her fiberglass pieces, in a method similar to etching by carving images out of the wood and then building up color in the impressions.

"The images would just appear to me as I carved them," said O'Banion. "I would draw in chalk on the door. There'd be natural gifts that would happen as I carved away the wood. There were these smoke-like lines coming out or just patterns in the woodgrain which add a quality to the carving that I could never get."

Her painted images are based on dreams, visions and experiences, and O'Banion chose the doors as her vehicle because she relishes the metaphoric passage of duality that a doorway represents.

"There's that amazing moment when you're in between," she said.

O'Banion's lecture and slide show presentation was well-received by approximately 200 art department students and faculty in attendance, including art majors Darrelle Browning and Cara Garcia, who found the presentation inspiring.

"It gives you inspiration to just go out and work with your hands, more than anything. it was interesting" said Garcia.