In 2000, Durham repairman Gene Dillard began filling his yard with metal art; 15 years later, he started a mosaic home with hand tools, and neighbors gave tours

Most people who spend their working lives repairing other people’s equipment do not expect to spend retirement building an elaborate work of folk art. Perhaps a veggie patch in the back or a fishing pole. Few grab a pair of tile nippers and a bucket of shattered mirrors. On Elgin Street in Durham, North Carolina, Gene Dillard began filling his yard with metal sculptures around 2000 and started covering his house with mosaics around 2015, according to a PBS North Carolina profile. Dillard says he had never made art before taking on the project and had spent his working life as a repairman. The SPACES archives document the home’s mirror-covered exterior, backyard spaceship, pottery fence, and yard sculptures. None of it was meant as a business. Dillard says he doesn't sell his art and has manufactured most of it with modest hand tools.From repair work to mosaic artDillard was a repairman by trade and spent a good part of his working life maintaining scientific and restaurant supplies, according to Indy Week. He moved from San Diego to North Carolina in the 1980s and settled in Durham’s Northgate Park district. He tells us that he moved into the Elgin Street residence about the year 2000 and that is when the garden began to transform.The first were metallic. Dillard made a sea monster out of rebar that holds his mailbox, a surfer riding a wave down the front lawn, and a rainbow mermaid observing from the right. He has remarked that a first major mosaic, done together with a friend, got under his skin and he has been hooked on the craft ever since. He also said he likes the repetitive motion of the job, which helps explain why the project never ceased.Mirrors, pottery, and a spaceship in the backyardIn 2015, Dillard grew tired of making yard sculptures and began covering his house and garage with mosaics. He covered the walls of the front and driveway with pieces of mirror, first in winding vines that soon sprung from the wall in three-dimensional chunks. By 2017 he’d finished three walls of the home, three of the garage, and it was all cut with handheld tile nippers.In the backyard, Dillard built a spaceship from two-inch-square metal tubes welded together and wrapped in rebar. Green, blue and amber bottles cover the structure, filtering colored light into its interior at different times of day. Around it, a fence he completed over three years during the COVID quarantine holds pottery donated by friends and guests. Many works are presented with the potter’s name facing outward, a reference to craftspeople whose signatures are often unseen. Seven faces, including a Cyclops, a King, a Queen and a Knight, are made of rebar and cement and studded with shards, bottles and one unopened bottle of Jack Daniels. Within, each large window has its own mosaic valance, doors are trimmed in a matching daisy pattern, and the entryway over the front door has been converted to a double-height opening. Online maps label the address as Gene Dillard’s Fantasy Land.Dillard has been forthright about the source of the urge. He cited a few self-taught craftsmen as his influence in a 2017 interview with the Strange Carolinas travel site, including Minnie Evans, whose drawings he adores, and Henry Warren, whose small village in Prospect Hill he dubbed his personal Mecca. Warren’s Shangri-La is a town of 27 stone structures, which the retired tobacco farmer created on his own, commencing in 1968, the state tourism portal VisitNC says.Calling on a private residenceDillard says his neighbors have been supportive. In a PBS North Carolina feature about the house, one individual interviewed stated visitors sometimes feel overwhelmed by it and others are reluctant to come up the driveway, so they wanted a handout that points out minor details people might otherwise miss.SPACES describes the front and back yards as open to the public at all hours and claims Dillard is pleased to chat with guests if he happens to be there during the day. The inside of the house is his living space, and it is still a private property on a residential street, so a quiet visit and pleasant wave go a long way. The house is at 2706 Elgin St., in Northgate Park.And this is just the beginning. In winter 2024, the mosaic face of the chimney fell off, and Dillard wants to create a replacement. He's also got a wizard sculpture coming up that will have a lamp to light up his yard at night. The mosaic-covered exterior remains an evolving work of folk art, visible to passersby while the house itself remains a private residence.You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.