As much as she likes to show off her ceramics, artist Gina DeSantis wanted a new way to highlight the works she creates in her studio at the Screw Factory in Lakewood. “I hate showing my work in galleries,” she declares. “It just sits on a white pedestal and it’s like, ‘oh look, a mug.’”

Then DeSantis started thinking about the whole farm-to-table movement, and the practice of sourcing food locally. She thought, why can’t that practice apply to the plates people use to eat their local food?
 
So DeSantis contacted her friend Jillian Davis, owner of Toast restaurant, about a showing her work in the restaurant. Davis loved the idea, and with that Kiln to Table: An evening of fine craft and fine dining was born.
 
DeSantis designed 50 three-piece place settings – a salad plate, a dinner plate and a soup bowl – for the restaurant. Diners have the option to buy their place settings after dinner (the setting will be cleaned and packed up for pick up on Friday). Of course, guests are not obligated to buy their settings.
 
"I came up with rustic, simple dinnerware for Toast,” DeSantis says. “It accentuates the food and doesn’t distract from it.”
 
Kiln to Table is a one-night exhibit. But DeSantis would like to see restaurant shows become a regular thing. “It’s one night only, but hopefully it will be more,” she says. “I might get other artists involved and we’ll hop around the city. “
 
DeSantis adds that she wants to continue the trend of buying locally. “There’s this frenzy for everything local,” she says. “We’re growing and sourcing everything locally and then throw it on a 50-cent Ikea plate.”
 
She encourages people to take the trend a step further and buy their dinnerware locally as well.  We’re so concerned about sourcing everything local, but we get from A to Y,” DeSantis explains. “It may be more costly, but if you’re really concerned about sourcing local, it’s worth it.”
 
 Kiln to Table is scheduled for Thursday, November 5 from 4:30 pm to 11 pm. Reservations are recommended.

For small business owners reclaiming historic space, the path is different but the goal is the same: to use the foundation of antiquity as building blocks for modern ventures.

Jim Conti found a hobby in making wine five years ago. While his friends loved his wine, he wanted to do something with sediment left at the bottom of his bottles.

“I didn’t want to throw it away,” he recalls. “I thought about what I could do with it. I tried it, and it was pretty good.”

Then one day it came to Conti: Why not make jams out of the sweet sediment left over from the wine her created? After many recipe trials and taste tests, Cleveland Jam was born. Since 2013 Conti and his two partners, Dennis Kramer and Dennis Schultz, have been producing jams and jellies made from local wines and beers.
 
Conti begins the jam making process by boiling down the wine to remove the alcohol, then processing it into jams and jellies. After perfecting the wine jellies, he thought “why not beer?” So Conti went to work on making beer jams as well.
 
Cleveland Jam now has five beer jams and three different wine jellies – all made with local brewers, vineyards and locally-grown produce. The company’s signature wine jelly flavors are Dynamite White Zinfandel, Rock and Roll Merlot and Press Play Cabernet.
 
The company has its own half-acre vineyard in the Clark-Fulton district off W. 25^th Street on Sackett Avenue. The eight varieties should start producing fruit in the next two years. The site is actually an old brewery from the prohibition age and Conti hopes to open a storefront there. His ultimate dream is to open urban vineyards all over the city.
 
In addition to his original Beer Jam, Conti began working with Great Lakes Brewing Company last year to create Burning River Pepper jam. In July the two companies released Eliot Ness Fig-Apple jam. “They put it on prosciutto sandwiches,” Conti says. Cleveland Jam also makes two beer jellies with a brewing company in Catawba – blueberry IPA and mango habanero.
 
The jams are used on menu items at Great Lakes and are available in Great Lakes gift shops.  Their popularity is keeping Conti busy these days. This summer Cleveland Jam was chosen as one of three companies in the Old Brooklyn Community Development’s business pitch competition to receive a grant to open a storefront in the Old Brooklyn. Conti says he hopes to open in the city in the next few months.

Along with promoting Asiatown and Asian culture in Cleveland, Night Market Cleveland is helping launch the careers of a small army of entrepreneurs and artists.

This weekend, hop on a trolly at SPARX City Hop and visit events throughout downtown, Ohio City and Tremont, check out local music at Heights Music Hop, get inspired at Creative Mornings and more.

Hoteliers and tourism officials recently convened at Tri-C to discuss best practices in workforce development as Cleveland heads toward next summer's Republican convention.

Not everyone's feeling the craft food boom in Ohio City. The nonprofit May Dugan Center has anchored the corner of Fulton and Bridge for 46 years, helping poor residents meet their basic needs.

This weekend, check out the zine scene at MOCA, drop in at Night Market Cleveland, attend Pecha Kucha Volume 26, support the nonprofit CAN Journal and more.

Mohammad Noormal, who resettled in Cleveland in 2014, now leads the Learning Garden and Production Farm at Urban Community School.

This weekend, celebrate the cultures that make up Northeast Ohio at Cleveland World Festival, experience a fusion of Asian food and culture at Night Market, embrace the power of writing at Cleveland Inkubator and more.

Northeast Ohio has three organizations dedicated to getting fresh produce and sustainably-grown goods to consumers through online ordering.