It is probably one of Pessa Kayla Finn's crystal kinetic artworks, designed to do just that. The multifaceted Finn-she works in metal, multi-media art, photography, video, puppetry and a technique called virtual perspective-is one of nearly 20 artists in the juried show, which is in its fourth year, according to the organizer, Eudice Germaine. Each artist works in a different medium, from painting to ceramics to jewelry, and all but one are Jewish. Germaine says Finn is one of the most intriguing. A former Skokie resident who now lives in Milwaukee, she has been making and teaching art most of her life. After a divorce, with her children grown, she decided to devote herself full time to creating art. Since then, her work has been included in many shows, collections and museums, including the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center in Skokie. Finn's work has recently gone in a new direction. Making the Midwestern art fair circuit, she came across an artist named Jeff Johnson whose work fascinated her. She soon found out that he was selling his business, including the complex techniques he used in his art, and she bought it on the spot. Now she makes crystal kinetic art, which she describes as "(Israeli artist) Agam on steroids." The idea, she said in a recent phone conversation, is that one piece contains multiple images, which change as the viewer shifts position. The complex technique involves slicing and interlacing a number of images, either in real space or digitally. Finn has been applying the procedure to her own images, which include nature and Judaic subject matter. She calls her work "reverse kinetic art. In kinetic art, for instance, a mobile, the art itself moves. In reverse kinetic art, the viewer moves," she says. "I like to combine traditional subject matter with modern techniques," she adds. For instance, one of the works she will have in the B'nai Shalom show is a collage consisting of a series of overlapping images of the Kotel in Jerusalem. The viewer first sees the image from close up, then it seems to be moving farther and farther away and appears to undulate as the viewer walks past it. She plans to put the technique to work on a piece that will show the Red Sea opening and closing. Finn is also interested in aquariums and kaleidoscopes. She has applied the kinetic art technique to pictures of fish and corals she took at Chicago's Shedd Aquarium, and discovered a computer program that allows an artist to make a kaleidoscopic image of any picture. Her other work includes an image of a burning bush mounted on a piece of black granite and framed in a digital frame covered with metal work, with an oil menorah in front. "The light of the menorah will reflect on the flames of the artwork. It is interactive artwork that you can put on the wall," she says. Another piece also involves an oil menorah in front of a digital frame that can be filled with whatever the viewer wishes. "You could have (pictures of) your own family, or you could have a slide show," she says. "It's taking a contemporary idea and combining it with an oil menorah, which is very traditional." For her pieces in the Illinois Holocaust Museum, Finn took photos at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and printed them on burnt paper. "I used a frame that was chipped and distressed-it looked like it had been through a war," she says. In Milwaukee, Finn is the artist-in-residence for a program called Ruach. "It brings art and music to the Jewish community," she explains. A recent project involved people from different segments of the Jewish world working together on a mural showing the ecosystems of Israel, each group creating a different panel. "Each organization illustrates the story in a different medium to weave Jewish stories together," Finn says. "There is no agenda at all except the achdus-the unity of working together." Outside of the Jewish community, Finn has found it is not so easy to be an observant Jew in the art world. For most juried shows, she says, it's necessary to be on hand both days of the show -- Saturday and Sunday. She doesn't work on Shabbat, so she first tried hiring someone to run her booth for her on Saturdays. In a story with many twists and turns, the young man she hired discovered that he was Jewish, although his family had kept their origins hidden after family members perished in the Holocaust. Finn helped the man and his mother reconnect with their Jewish roots-the mother and her non-Jewish husband are in the process of undergoing a formal conversion-even though it meant she couldn't let them work for her on Shabbat. At the last minute she found someone else for that show, but says now she no longer works the art festival circuit. That just gives her more time to explore new avenues for getting her work before the public and to refine new techniques. "I love making art," she says. "Some people just need to make art." The Fine Arts/Crafts and Judaica Festival takes place from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 15 at Congregation B'nai Shalom of Buffalo Grove, 701 W. Aptakisic Road, Buffalo Grove. For more information, call (847) 415-1370.