Elizabeth Campbell's drawings make you think of bushes. In each one, branches and leaves of graphite handwriting strive asymmetrically upwards and outwards from their origin at the bottom of the page. At first the girlish handwriting is distracting: it is a little too round and each line slants up to the right in a way that seems undisciplined. But they are words, so you start reading them, and as soon as you do you are hooked.

Each of the three drawings begins with a specific recent day in Campbell's life. On each day the artist has assessed her life, and you are invited to assess it with her. Mostly it's the usual subjects: jobs, dating, apartment issues, art career developments. And then, once the subjects have been identified, she proceeds to obsess.

And obsess she does, making Ally McBeal and Bridget Jones look like unimaginative amateurs. That might sound facetious, but the comparison is far from unflattering. Like characters McBeal and Jones, Campbell's work entertains and touches people. Her drawings attract a substantial crowd of admirers, who can been found avidly reading Campbell's ruminations just about any time the museum is open. The works seem to touch a universal chord, at least among the demographic that tends to visit P.S.1.

And reading these drawings is very like reading someone's diary -- except backwards. Instead of finding out what has really been felt and experienced, you are reading what is hoped or feared or anticipated. But it is no less personal than a journal. To show the world, and specifically the boyfriends, loft-mates, curators, and employers in Campbell's life, exactly what she fears and fantasizes is no small act of exhibitionism. Which of course makes you the voyeur, and a very satisfied one at that.

But, significantly unlike certain fictional characters, Campbell's work doesn't insult your intelligence; she has something on her mind besides dating and dieting. Campbell's openness about her hopes and fears may mirror her less sharp-witted counterparts, but both her desires themselves and their expression are considerably more substantial--while still providing the therapeutic reassurance that our own similar hopes and fears aren't crazy, or at least, if we are crazy, we are not alone. For instance, a thread that starts on 12/6/99 with "Studio visit with curator" features as one of its many possible outcomes the simultaneously depressing and optimistic "I drive myself crazy, my friends have me institutionalized, I get to make paintings all day and eat for free."

The shapes of these writings recall webs, and the Web as well. They branch this way and that and make organic connections on their way to variously likely conclusions. But on the Web, once you go far enough down any road it is arduous to retrace your steps to find your way back, and nearly impossible to make a lateral move--to find the same block on a parallel street. But in Campell's drawings we see the future as a shape that can be comprehended all at once. We can peruse its terminal branches, follow a single thread, or admire the shape of the bush--the physical form that these obsessions create.

Ironically, the primary pleasure in the audio work (Delugology) which accompanies the drawings, is its physical shape. Speakers of various sizes hang in a weighty clump like grapes. But Delugology is less satisfying than the drawings because it is less intelligible. The words coming out of the speakers are difficult to string together into sense, and sense is what you're looking for.