How does a doctor diagnose how his artistic creativity comes?
If you’re internal medicine specialist Dr. Randall Leduc of Dillsboro, you chart a simple theory or two of the the snowstorm of ideas that blow in regularly.
“I’ve probably got a little A.D.D.,” said the 56-year-old Leduc, speaking from his home after work. “And I have to say that my mind works really, really fast.”
So speedily that he cannot readily and adequately dissect all the flow of information. But his playful, whimsical assemblages that he began building a few years after learning to weld all shine a light — literally, since they all plug in — on his inventiveness.
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One featured piece that he sometimes displays includes the front, shining grille of an old Jeep, rolling in from the past. No wonder he is the featured artist at 15th Annual Deja Vu Art and Fine Craft Show Nov. 9 at The Commons in downtown Columbus.
His works also include engine parts, gears, pistons and gauges, and unique items that include old cameras, ice skates, typewriters and more.
“They’ve just gotten more elaborate,” he said of the pieces that look like a cross of sorts between flashes of Rube Goldberg and Dr. Seuss. All his proceeds support an orphanage in the Dominican Republic.
Show founder, coordinator and longtime repurposing artist Marilyn Brackney called Leduc’s work “very original.”
The free, annual event regularly attracts an estimated 1,000 to 1,500 people. This year, the show will include artists and creators from five states — Michigan, Ohio, Illinois, Kentucky and Indiana — among its 60 vendors.
The gathering celebrates America Recycles Day. It does so by highlighting a broad range of artists using scrap wood, fabric, metals, wristwatches — you name it — and turning those pieces into new jewelry boxes, jackets, coasters, candleholders, tables, whimsical figures and other items.
Maybe the most appropriate aspect of the event is that it occurs all around late sculptor Jean Tinguely’s work “Chaos I,” perhaps the area’s best local calling card for art creatively done with salvaged and recycled materials.
“But some people still have no idea about the show,” Brackney said.
That merely gives her a bigger audience to aim toward with her marketing efforts.
“And I always say that this show is going to be best one ever,” Brackney said.
She is hardly merely spouting knee-jerk optimism. As born-again art evolves, it moves to new levels, as she sees it.
“I think the quality of the work I’m seeing just gets better and better,” said Brackney, a longtime leader in recycled art.
Columbus native Alice Holcomb, now living in Michigan, is perhaps a bit more excited than some of the other vendors about Deja Vu because it represents her first such show. She is a relative newcomer to creating mittens and winter hats from recycled, wool sweaters.
“And I’m hoping to expand eventually into other upcycled or recycled wearables,” she said.
One thing about Deja Vu, a gathering filled with reinvented tomorrows, is that even the trash cans there seem to hold possibilities.
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What: The 15th Annual Deja Vu Art and Fine Craft Show, featuring repurposed art in assemblage, encaustic, glass art, home décor, jewelry, leatherwork, metal sculpture, mixed media, mosaic, papier-mâché, wearable art, weaving, and wood arts.
When: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Nov. 9.
Where: The Commons, 300 Washington St. in downtown Columbus.
Admission: Free.
Information: Facebook page for Deja Vu Art and Fine Craft Show
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