Though she received her MFA from American University just last year, local artist Emily Francisco is well on her way to becoming our next Mia Feuer. Only a couple of months after she graduated, Francisco started a five-month residency at Artisphere. During that time, she also staged her first solo show in St. Louis and participated in Transformer’s Exercises for Emerging Artists program, culminating in a piece for Artisphere’s massive sound art installation, “Fermata,” this summer. Specializing in interactive objects that generate sound, Francisco has a particular penchant for dismantling and reimagining discarded musical instruments, especially violins and pianos; she rehairs bows and rewires strings to activate radio alarm clocks and video projections. Her “Variation on the Ocular Harpsichord” may be extraordinarily out of tune—purposefully so—but she plays it with gusto while images flash on a wall nearby in time with the notes. An artist of process as much as product, Francisco’s works are always performative, whether she’s gutting a harpsichord or playing a toy piano while enclosed in a box that slowly fills up with water. And, best of all, she invites the audience members to take a seat and try out her bizarrely reconstructed musical instruments for themselves. Sept. 12–Oct. 11 at Flashpoint Gallery. Free.