A green man once told a donkey that ogres were like onions, but he may as well have been talking about Emily Joyce’s work. The paintings in her third solo exhibition at David B. Smith Gallery are practically peelable, layered as they are with color, shape, symbolism, history and science, mock texture, mathematics, and source material. But unlike onions (which may cause tears), the art in Deal, or, How I Became Radioactive, now on view through February 21, has a friendly exhilaration that chatters off the walls. And best of all, Joyce’s work attests that the best art always knows the shape of its own container.

Six LGBTQ+ youths aided Allyson McDuffie in executing artworks and producing CAMP: Queer Arts and Crafts & the Beauty of Imperfection over two months and forty hours of workshop time. The artist anticipated her looming exhibition deadline and need for hands—twelve of them—to help realize a “comical and poignant” evocation of American summer camps “with a queer twist.”

While each artist exhibits a similar interest in abstraction, Camille McMurry, Julie Rothschild, and Sara Goldenberg White employ parallel means for achieving disparate ends. But the result is a visually engaging exhibition that yields more questions than answers. For where Fiber Arts lacks a cohesive narrative or conviction, the works and the context in which they are displayed raise a debate about the nature of art and where and when we expect to see it.