That's surely the message hammered home in the major retrospective show of his jewelry, functional objects, and ceremonial pieces, "Five Decades 1959-2009," at the Art Alliance. A local resident and world-class metalsmith artist, Lechtzin was scheduled to be honored yesterday with a lifetime achievement award by the Society of North American Goldsmiths, meeting in Philadelphia.

Lechtzin brings contemporary life into his art - and his teaching - with magical skill. At Temple University's Tyler School of Art, he is known for encouraging exploration to heighten student inquiry, research, and responsiveness to present-day society.

Always keen on applying current technology to his own art, Lechtzin pioneered the use of electroforming to produce jewelry. Well demonstrated here, that method dominated his 1960s production, better enabling him to combine gems and mineral crystals with metal and also achieve jewelry of unusually large size. By 1968, Japan had taken notice. In '73, Lechtzin had a solo show at Goldsmiths' Hall, England.

He next used cast plastic with embedded natural objects in several strikingly innovative, functional religious pieces (Catholic, Jewish) here. And then he moved completely away from capturing organic growth toward pristine, swift, computer-generated work. He makes all these geometric, 3-D digital pieces in collaboration with his artist wife, Daniella Kerner.

Perhaps Lechtzin's greatest achievement is that he has always managed to avoid the dazzling virtuoso image that people too often associate with very gifted artists. Lechtzin shapes another, humbler, more genuine and highly distinctive image of the artist for us.

He goes to great lengths so we can see the noble beauty that sometimes lies hidden in new art. I believe he might even spare viewers the slightest intrusion of his own personality, if it would block their insight.

And perhaps that's what it takes to get people to see things anew. It's also the reason we like him a lot instead of being awed.

Looking at new art, Lechtzin famously asks his students, "What does it teach us?" Plenty, in this superb show of nearly 100 objects - enough for at least three visits.

'Arthouse' show

The energy and conviction that charge this display's enigmatic images of people, places, dreams and nightmares is impressive. And the large showing of found-object pieces by key Dumpster Diver artists makes other exotic or primitivistic imagery look neither gratuitous nor self-indulgent.

16 from co-op show work

Sixteen artists from the Nexus co-op in Lower Kensington showcase their work at "Invasive Species" at the Community Arts Center in Wallingford. Save for Nick Coviello, painting is scarce; drawings and photos are plentiful.

Drawing is an end in itself in Elaine Erne's enormous graphite renderings, which tremble on the edge of something more edgy, like "narrative noir." Matt Pruden's wordy charcoals have a gritty rectitude, subdued by Virginia Batson's fastidious little white squares.

How wide the compass of photography has become. It extends here from Susan Abrams' plant specimens on handmade paper, successfully plugged into the vital aesthetic power of "ordinary" plants, to Nick Cassway's portraits on the edge of banality.

Sat 9-noon. Free. 610-566-1713.