ART REVIEW : ‘Crux of Matter’ Weaves Tight Web of Symbolism

People, Cheryl O’Neill asserts in a statement for her exhibition in Bard Hall at First Unitarian Church in Hillcrest, are “the centers of meaning.” Humans are the mediating forces between vast, abstract chaos and the structures and beliefs that shape our lives.

The show, on view through today, examines the range of ways--from scientific to spiritual--that humans have interpreted their world.

O’Neill, who lives in Encinitas, makes her point well in the dense montage of images and text that spans her 40-foot scroll drawing, “The Crux of Matter.” Examples of the symbols, maps, diagrams and systems that serve as our guides through the phenomena of existence are tightly knit in O’Neill’s drawing, and their placement in relation to one another reveals much about the artist’s own sympathies.

She contrasts Urana, an ancient goddess, with Vanna White, the starlet of a television game show, to expose the shallowness and absurdity of our contemporary pantheon. She mourns, implicitly, a way of life in affinity with the natural rhythms of the earth. In our era, she writes, the summer solstice is the time to celebrate such nationalistic, militaristic holidays as Flag Day and the Fourth of July.

Such ironies and tragedies surface throughout O’Neill’s scroll, whether her focus is environmental pollution or rampant materialism. The quantity of material she presents, including numerous excerpts from weighty, theoretical texts, can be daunting, but skeins of relevance and poignancy can be extracted from this tapestry with ease.

Blueprints for the scroll are also on view, as are several related paintings, but they add little to the thrust of O’Neill’s meaningful message.