Cleveland, please visit the Cleveland Museum of Art for the exhibit Jazz Age: American Style in the 1920s before the show comes down on January 15th.

There are many reasons to visit and revisit this show, but for me, the most important story here are the designers who made the "products" shown in the exhibit. Unlike "fine art" ~ the items on display were meant to be owned as evidence of a life well-lived. The pieces made of humble materials - glass, clay, cloth, iron - also categorized as "industrial arts," intrigue me the most.

Several items are staged through the exhibit as "showstoppers," including the magnificent chandelier by George Chevalier of Baccarat and the Muse with Violin Screen by Paul Feher of Cleveland-based Rose Ironworks.

Artisans during the twenties were fluidly moving between the United States and Europe and Cleveland designers with immediate family ties to Paris and Berlin, like Louis Rorimer, defined the style of Cleveland homes and businesses. Industrial arts are still very much a part of how we define life here in Cleveland and with enough support can elevate our community to the standards of good taste found in the 1920s.

Wealth should not be measured in dollars, but in the quality of life we have here and making the most of the resources available to us. We still have jazz in Cleveland: Artists who understand that living well is wealth. Concurrent with the Jazz Age show at the Cleveland Museum of Art is the exhibit Heritage: Wadsworth and Jae Jarrell, paintings, sculpture and textiles produced by the married couple who now call Cleveland's Glenville neighborhood home. Throughout Cleveland, other artists continue to quietly live and work and make every day items that elevate our lives. Some of those artists include Tom Balbo, who has taken paper art to new levels at the Morgan Conservancy, and in an old warehouse, now an Asian Market, Gadi Zamir works to transform discarded wood into works of art at Negative Space Gallery. And, students at the Cleveland Institute of Art design products we use in every facet of our lives.

Industrial art and design is very much the Cleveland story. It will be interesting to see how that is made more relevant and known with the Front International scheduled for Spring 2018.