Submitted photo
A scene of some of the crowd at a past Deja Vu Art and Fine Craft Show at The Commons in downtown Columbus.
Organizers say that the 18th free Deja Vu Art and Fine Craft Show slated Nov. 9 at The Commons in downtown Columbus is shaping up to be “the best ever.”
Founder, Columbus resident and Indiana artisan Marilyn Brackney used those words in a brief interview to promote the scheduling of the show that has attracted an estimated 1,000 to 1,500 people annually for years among a wide variety of 60 vendors.
Besides Indiana, exhibitors are coming from Kentucky, Illinois, Ohio, Tennessee, North Carolina and elsewhere.
“I think it will be the best because of the overall quality of the artists,” Brackney said. “And soon, we’re really going to be hitting the marketing and the advertising.”
The juried show remains unique in the art and arts circles because it features works from coats to clocks made with recycled or repurposed materials and thereby highlights America Recycles Day.
The show crowd, which normally includes plenty of artists themselves, learns that new beauty can be found in born-again items.
The trash-to-treasures gathering, featuring pieces ranging from maybe $10 for small, coffee table pieces to a few thousand dollars for elaborate works, highlights creative recycling and environmental responsibility 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.
Brackney, a former public school art teacher, has won national attention over the years for her commitment to repurposed art. In 1992, she completed an art piece called Trashasaurus Rex, a paper mache dinosaur created almost entirely out of post-consumer solid waste partly to highlight the nation’s limited landfill space.
Shortly after the work’s completion, she took the piece to the first Kids’ World Conference on the Environment held at the Nickelodeon Television Studios in Orlando, Florida.
Through the years, the local event begun in 2005 regularly has earned praise from first-time visitors, including artists who say they’ve never quite seen such a mix of media and innovative style.
Lincoln-Central Neighborhood Family Center is the presenting sponsor.
