A smashed car or house. A devastated person, sitting down. Samantha Scherer lifted these details from actual news photographs of wreckage or scenes from TV crime dramas. Each image is stranded, in faint pencil, at the center of a sea of otherwise empty white paper. The titles are from slogans smeared on buildings post-disaster: “Yes We R OK,” “Will Rebuild Strong,” “Remember.” Chris Crites, the other artist this month, also works in ruins and rehabilitation. His paintings of historical crime and wreck scenes are rendered so precisely, yet in such a riot of color, that the tragedies gleam. (G. Gibson Gallery, 300 S Washington St, ggibsongallery.com, 11 am–5 pm, free, through Oct 11)

Jen Graves (The Stranger’s former arts critic) mostly writes about things you approach with your eyeballs. But she’s also a history nerd interested in anything that needs more talking about, from male...