It was truly serendipitous.

I was out doing an interview, and decided to stop at the Columbus Public Library to see an exhibit by local artist Reggie Radney.

He had sent me an e-mail earlier in the week to let me know that he was installing his exhit.

I took a look and was intrigued, so I was headed back to the office to let him know that I’d like to talk to him.

As I was walking down the stairs, a young man was going up. He looked at me, paused and asked, “Are you Sandra?”

And I said, “Are you Reggie?”

Yes, we were.

So I went back upstairs near the Genealogy area, where the exhibit is. We talked then as he tweaked the exhibit by moving objects and adding others.

Radney, 39, grew up on a farm off Old River Road, he told me. He said his family was poor and he learned how to whittle wood by watching his grandfather make toys for him.

“We had pigs and chickens in our yard,” he said.

He left Columbus to escape from an abusive situation at home, and stayed away for more than 20 years. He later went to Carroll University in Waukesha, Wisc., where he graduated in 1994.

Radney made a life for himself in Wisconsin. But he found himself unemployed when the television station where he worked downsized. That’s when he returned to Columbus, where he was born and reared.

Today, he’s working as an artist. A small exhibit in two glass cases in the Columbus Public Library is where you can find his work.

The books portion correlates the books he’s read with some of the small sculptures he’s carved from wood. This exhibit does not show any of the work he’s doing as a painter.

The worn paperback books he’s picked are by authors he considers to be “black cultural icons” who have transcended race.

Some of the sculptures have been treated with ceramics or gilded paint to look like they are of stone or bronze. However, they are wood.

“Art is for everybody,” he said. “I don’t want to be typecast” as a black artist.

What he does want to be is a “world-class artist.”

Some symbols, he uses over and over like circles. Radney also uses American Indian images because he is part Cherokee, he said. His cultural background includes white, Cherokee and black heritage, he said.

His exhibit, “What Are You Looking At?,” can be seen through July.

Call 706-243-2669.