ROCK SPRING, Ga. - An artist who builds statues from tools and household objects has lost his prominent stage.
Allan Chesser and his brother moved Saturday morning from their home on U.S. Highway 27 after their landlord sold the property. Chesser has built a modest fan base in North Georgia after constructing three 6-foot-tall statues with objects that range from screws, bolts and flex couplers to potato slicers, stereo speakers and shower hoses.
Chesser displays the statues on his front lawn, right next to the highway. The heavily trafficked road has been his audience. Some strangers stop to meet him. Others honk in appreciation.
"I'll miss this front yard here," he said last week, days before his move. "All the people. The people pass by and blow them horns and wave at me. A guy can get used to that. One day, nobody knows you or would even want to know you. Then, all of a sudden, you're somebody. That doesn't happen to a lot of people. I never thought it would happen to me."
He has moved about five miles east to 327 Teems Road in Ringgold. The property is more secluded, but Chesser hopes residents will visit him and his work.
Chesser and his brother moved to their old home, located at 6620 N. Highway 27, in January 2011. He began building his first statue about three years later when his nephew saw a structure of a robot from "The Terminator" online. Unable to precisely explain his motivation, Chesser told his nephew he could build the robot with items from the hardware store.
Thus began an obsession that has yet to cease. Chesser spends most of his meager paycheck from an assembly-line job buying items at Walmart and hardware stores, which he hopes to add to the statues. He works at all hours when he's off work, sometimes tinkering into the early morning.
He has only built three statues in the last 4 1/2 years, but his work on those structures never stops. More than a year after completing a figure based off the film "Alien," Chesser continued to modify it by adding more pieces to the the core of the statue's body.
As his reputation has swelled, North Georgia residents have left their own junk on his yard. One day last summer, Chesser returned from work to find two old TVs under a tree in the front yard. He stripped them for parts.
"That's how most people find him," said his niece, Sharon Gilreath. "They just ride by him. He was down about [the move] for a while, actually. He didn't want to move."
Chesser announced the move on Our Walker County, a Facebook group for residents of the community. He said he was worried he and his brother wouldn't be able to afford rent and a security deposit for a new place. But some residents left money for him in a lock box on his front yard. One day, he found $150 in a single donation.
"As long as he's got his transformers to work on, he'll be good," said his friend, Charity Kidd Lewis. "But the public interacting with him, it brings him joy. He's really worried about it. I'm not sure how it's going to work out."
Chesser said the new home is nicer inside than his old property, which he said was filled with mold and holes. It got cold at night, and he was ashamed to bring acquaintances in. He hopes a new audience can grow here.
"I was deserting people is what I felt like," he said. "That was pretty rough for a minute. I'm worried a little of everything. It's a conglomerate of feelings I'm going through. It's that. And I'll be forgotten. I'll be 55 years old. I'm not going to be around forever."
Contact staff writer Tyler Jett at 423-757-6476 or tjett@timesfreepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @LetsJett.