Downtown

When Gillian Theobald draws twin, abstract tree trunks on two sheets of paper, the images play conceptual games about seeing and perception. Skin-smooth tree trunks float on the page, solid from the ground up, sensuously rounded with thick limbs that recall the human body. As the image shifts from left to right, the ground goes from light to dark and the image flips front to back. Rendered in charcoal, the black-on-black drawing is a hard-to-see, image of intriguing subtlety.

A large part of this exhibit is devoted to a “Diary Project” begun in 1982. It’s a series of 309 self-portrait drawings. Many were done without a mirror. Small liberties with what is observable--like orange flames that ignite the face--describe the artist’s state of mind. The drawings have the feel of Zen exercises that encourage repetitive small rituals to achieve a new consciousness. They have a plodding, systematic sensibility. Taken together they are strangely static, even when dipping into the potent realm of psychological balance. Most often the face is vacant and the drawing graphically direct. It’s only in the context of the whole that a tentative sense of the artist can be felt. That may be intended to raise questions about art’s ability to actually represent reality, but the formula seems slanted to arrive at a negative conclusion. (Cirrus, 542 S. Alameda St., to June 24.)