The god in Manifest Gallery’s Deus Ex Machina does not arise from the traditional machine (that crane elevating a Greek actor of ancient times to meet a plot need for divine intervention), but instead from our handy modern device, the camera.   

It’s appropriate that Project Obscura at Northside’s Prairie Gallery opened before FotoFocus officially kicks off Oct. 5. After all, the camera obscura (Latin for “dark chamber”) led to the modern camera.  

Manifest’s latest addition is the Manifest Artist Residency. Annually, beginning in July each year, Manifest will host a working artist in the studio facility inside the gallery building.  

The young women photographed in Another Me: Transformations from Pain to Power have all been victims of kidnapping or outright sale of themselves into sex slavery. One is as young as 8 years old, none are more than 22. Rescued and placed in the Sanlaap Shelter in Kolkata, they found returning to a self they had lost hard going.  

FOTOFOCUS, which gets fully underway in October, is one of the most ambitious visual-arts events ever attempted in Greater Cincinnati — maybe the most ambitious.
  

Stuart Fink’s Shape to Shape at Brazee Street Studios’ gallery One One bristles with energy, mostly dispenses with narrative (who needs it?) and includes paintings as well as sculpture. Best known as a sculptor, Fink studied to be a painter and never really gave it up.  

See Unrealized and Unforeseen, Antonio Adams’ solo show at Thunder-Sky Inc., and leave feeling a bit more special, even if you aren’t on his list of “good celebrities,” superstars and Divas of Pride. Just witness the transformative power of art.  

Amid busy, vibrant abstract canvases and panels, the stark simplicity of a paperboard sculpture captures extra attention at Phyllis Weston Gallery’s Color NOW!, on display through Sept. 1.
  

Music of Change: Hymns, Blues & Rock at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center ultimately succeeds in providing a fascinating journey through the roles black music have played in America’s history, eloquently showing how African-American music has been celebration, protest, spiritual uplift, a means of communication and information sharing … sometimes all at once.
  

Go up the imposing staircase at Thompson House, continue past the second floor and on to the third, and you’ll be in the Thompson House Shooting Gallery, where art is the weapon at hand.
  

Former visiting professor at the University of Cincinnati’s DAAP Fashion Department Henry Navarro has returned to Cincinnati for Mis-Measured and a site-specific fashion-based public art project inspired by Cincinnati itself.
  

Jerome Jaffe is a character. With his thick New York accent, wiry frame, perma-five o’clock shadow and penchant for misnomers, he’s kind of a minor celebrity in his home base of Brighton in the West End. He recently bought Rake’s End from long-time area resident/developer Fred Lane, and is determined to see the bar succeed.  

NVISION, Emily Buddendeck's quirky venture at 4577 Hamilton Ave. in Northside, has grown steadily during its four-and-a-half years of existence. “I opened on Leap Day of Leap year, Feb. 29, 2008. The day seemed appropriate because the shop was even more of a leap during a recession, but it really merged the various things I had been doing, career-wise,” she says.
  

You Are My Superhero, opening Sunday at Dayton Art Institute (DAI), is here to rescue art lovers from the summer blahs. The difference starts at the door, where there’s $2 off for wearing a superhero costume.  

Digital World presents James Duesing and three other artists whose work originates on a monitor via 3-D imaging and other programs. Should this art be viewed as something less because of its origins? I say no.