Hannah Finkelshteyn is a mixed media artist and curator based in East Brunswick, New Jersey. She is a recent BFA graduate from Mason Gross School of the Arts, where she studied drawing and media, with a focus on ink drawing, collaged work, and media installation. Hannah often describes her artistic and curatorial work as a manner of thinking. Her individual work combines the bold ink of graphic novelization with spoken language and abstract pattern. The symbols and language in her work often draw from the Jewish tradition. Like a mind stuck on an idea, the work reiterates and repeats images and moments in time until some form of solution or narrative emerges within the layers. Thematically, her personal work often explores the push and pull of existing as a cultural and religious Jew within America, and her curatorial work further explores the relationships and emotions that arise within cultural identities and communities. She has led several collaborative communal memorial art projects and curated exhibitions, both within the Rutgers Jewish community and within the Mason Gross community, including Calling Out to God (Or a Lack Thereof), a show focusing on artistic explorations of theology from a variety of religions. Her artwork is on permanent exhibition in the Eva and Hari Halpern Hillel House on Rutgers campus, and has been exhibited in a variety of group exhibitions in New York and New Jersey.

Ali Saracoglu discovered the art of Ebru (Turkish marbling) at just five years old, learning under the guidance of his father and master, Musa Saracoglu. Between 2003 and 2007, he grew up surrounded by local artists and exhibitions in Izmir that sparked his imagination and love for color. In 2013, he moved to Ankara and continued to refine his craft through the Bahtiyar school (Bahtiyar ekolü) in the historic neighborhood of Hamamönü. After a few years of practicing on and off between 2016 and 2020, he returned to Ebru with new energy in 2022. Since then, his work has reached audiences in Rio de Janeiro, Paris, Venice, and New York City. Through his art, Ali explores the harmony between tradition and modern expression, where color and movement become quiet reflections on balance and faith.

Muna Al Fadl is a New York City-based artist primarily focusing on the destruction, reconstruction, and fragmentation of memory and space within the Damascus cityscape. Al Fadl’s work overlaps architectural elements, portraiture, image transfer, and appropriated images from Google Earth in an interrogation of diasporic nostalgia in a post-war landscape. With the works primarily painted in stain on found wood, the physical basis establishes a conversation around post-war reconstruction and cautious nostalgia. 

Through the iconic Umayyad architecture, Al Fadl enters the collective and nationalistic memory of a disjointed nation, fracturing the architecture and thus separating structures from their original context. Arabic marquetry is a consistent muse of Al Fadl; the classic Damascene woodworking patterns flood the work while the handling of the paint references veneering itself. Unnatural lighting, fragmented archways, image transfer, and pattern reinforce the city’s urgent, historical, and unknown. Al Fadl’s work is an ode to an uncharted home, a response to the fall of tyranny, and a poem to the resilience of Damascus

For the last twenty years my visual artwork was primarily committed to two literary endeavors. The first involved illustrations for my novel Across Ancient Sands. It is a parallel story about an archaeological excavation in Algeria and the poem they uncover depicting a journey around the Mediterranean Sea during the time of the Odyssey, Aeneid, Hebrew Judges and last great Pharoh. The second book, Portraits of Philosophy, is an illustrated history of Near Eastern and Western philosophy from ancient times to the early 20th century. 

I have a BA in History from Dickinson College and an MBA from Baruch College. I also have participated in six archaeological excavations. I used acrylic paints for all of my artwork, although I have incorporated some other media on occasion. This included spray paint, wood, stucco, and joint compound. 

Amee J. Pollack is a mixed media artist with 30 years of experience in art and art education. She currently teaches ceramics part-time at Middlesex College after retiring from Mason Gross School of the Arts-Rutgers where she supervised the Art & Design undergraduate programs and advised film and art students.  Previously, Pollack taught at Creative Arts Laboratory, Teacher’s College, Columbia University, and The College of New Rochelle, New York.

Her artists’ books and constructions, under the banner “Spitz & Pollack”, are in the permanent collections of over 50 organizations such as the Cooper Hewitt-Smithsonian Design Museum, The Brooklyn Museum, The Getty Research Institute, and Yale University.  Amee holds an MFA in book arts/printmaking from The University of the Arts and received a fellowship in art education and design from Pratt Institute. 

Other current leadership includes being appointed by her town’s mayor on the Highland Park  Arts Commission, starting in 2016, where Pollack helped facilitate 50+ arts events including the Sculpture River Walk, Windows of Understanding, and the mural To Break Bread by Raul Ayala. Additionally, her bench-sculpture was re-installed in 2025 (Bench of Our Times) to help facilitate more public art in town. 

Miki Belenkov is a mixed-media painter and fiber artist based out of NYC. In their artwork, Miki juxtaposes “old” and “new” to explore themes of embodied identity, heritage, and the role of “the onlooker” in these concepts. Miki does so through a combination of portraiture, found imagery, and by pulling from their personal and artistic background. Miki’s work functions as an outlet for them to reflect on these themes and their manifestations as they appear within Miki’s own experiences as a first-generation, queer, NYC Jew, especially in a post-October 7th world.

Miki has a BFA in Textiles from Rhode Island School of Design, a Master’s in Art Therapy from NYU Steinhardt, and additional background in classical figure drawing and computational art. Miki’s work has been exhibited in the RISD museum, The National Academy, and NYU’s galleries, and has been featured in several publications within the US.