[peaceful gentle music] ♪ - When I get an idea I wanna do something.

I don't think about how to do it.

I just kind of get out and do it.

I get obsessed with projects and I can't let go of it and it causes me to spend hours doing it.

I've always worked with my hands.

I repaired scientific equipment refrigeration systems, bakery equipment.

I never did any art.

As a repair guy, I could creatively think about how to solve problems but this kind of takes it to a whole nother dimension.

[upbeat music] My name is Gene Dillard and we're in Durham, North Carolina.

Probably better known as Northgate Park.

And this is my home.

Welcome.

[upbeat music] I moved into this house about 2000.

I started with the metal sculptures in the front yard, and I just progressed with projects.

Ren Smith, a friend and I we mosaicked the first big piece that really stuck with me and I've been bitten by the mosaic bug ever since then.

About 2015, I started with my house.

Some people say, why'd you do this?

I said, well, I thought it was be cheaper than going to counseling, but I'm not so sure now.

[Gene laughing] All of this stuff has been done with handheld tile nippers.

Shout out to my tile nippers.

Yep.

I spend a lot of time out here in the backyard working on my projects, busting tile, building new structures.

What do the neighbors think?

What did they really think or what did they tell me?

[upbeat music] - We've lived in this house for 40 years.

He was moving into my neighborhood.

I had been here.

I think what he does is wonderful.

It grows and changes constantly, and I love it.

Gene calls me once in a while and would ask me to distract people.

He said, would you come over and talk?

I did.

I did that for him a few times.

So then I considered myself to be a denizen.

- Carol obviously was here while he was building everything and she started giving tours herself.

So she prided herself on being docent.

Well, I came along and started doing tours.

We got a little competition.

She won.

She's docent number one.

I'm docent number two.

I wanted to start documenting what Gene is doing here because it's just a spectacular piece of art.

When he retired, he really started working on the wall and finishing off the house.

This is definitely a working outdoor studio but it draws so much attention.

People come by, they see the house, they love it.

They're scared to walk up the driveway, and I thought it would be nice to have something to hand people pointing out little details of his work that may be missed because people are overwhelmed by seeing this house, - The bottle wall, the chimney on top.

- The surfing dude, the mermaid.

- This was supposed to be like an ocean scene.

- His dragon feeding his mailbox the wall with the giant heads from Rapa Nui they're Easter island heads.

- He's made sculptures out of rebar.

He uses cement to make trees.

- I pour concrete into bunt pans.

I spent all one winter making stars in my living room.

- It's a lot of mosaic, it's a lot of sculpture, found objects.

- I really don't know what I'm doing.

I'm just decorating my cave.

I have a lot of these heroes that are solitude, have a lot of solitude.

They don't live with a lot of people.

I think what stands out more than what they created, was the amount of time that they put into it.

Like Simon Roadie, he worked probably 35, 40 years on this by himself and he was just a tile setter.

What he created is undoubtedly remarkable.

Spent tremendous amount of time doing it.

It's not like just painting a picture or making a pot or something like that.

But they've devoted their whole life to it.

- He told me when he started here, "I do this to keep my hands out of the work of the devil", and it keeps him occupied.

He always told me at first, "I'm not an artist.

I'm not an artist.

I just make things and I finish things", and he does do that.

- This is the third wall of the house I did.

This was 500 hours of work.

It took me to do this from beginning to end.

I'd work all day and I'd come home and I'd probably be out here at 10 o'clock at night working.

There's a lot of things when I start a project, I don't really understand how it's going to evolve, because I'm not a real big planner and like when I built this I didn't realize how playful the lighting would be.

And at various times of the day, the concrete will be illuminated through with color because of the bottles.

Once I got the teepee done, I came and I stood right here and I looked over this way and I said, "Oh dang gone it.

I'm gonna have to build a fence".

This fence took me three years to make and I decorated it for a year.

Now this is what the fence looked like before I started decorating it.

These are the first two heads I made.

And now I kind of like the contrast.

I like to show people.

This one's a cyclops because that's kind of me because I'm blind in one eye.

I can't see it out of my, my right eye.

So that was kind of a self-portrait.

I graduated high school hardly being able to read and write and they kind of just kept pushing me through because I didn't cause trouble.

And I can read and write now, but it was not an easy thing for me to learn.

So this is kind of my ode to reading, and the weird dance I had with it.

I did Ninth Street Bakery's equipment for many years.

[angelic choir singing] And Frank Farrow, and his wife Moe Farrow, started Ninth Street Bakery.

And they gave me this bottle of whiskey for Christmas 30 years ago.

And I never drank it.

I had it in the garage and I painted it with polyurethane to protect it, and I stuck it in my wall.

- One of the things about Gene's art is that it's very private.

This is a private home.

This is his own workshop outside.

And this is what he enjoys doing.

- It's his, and I think he doesn't do it for any gain but his own, I think he does it 'cause he likes doing it.

And it's not for sale.

Nothing is for sale.

- He's never sold anything.

He's given a couple of things away but he doesn't even do that much any he doesn't do that at all.

- You can't be asking him to do other things.

Don't you see how busy he is?

- I do not sell my art.

This is really just about me having fun and pushing boundaries inside myself that I didn't know I had.

I've worked all my life as a repair man for money, and you never have enough.

And yeah, I don't have enough but this is something I do just because I enjoy it, it rocks my world.

[upbeat music] ♪