Something’s weird on Gilead Road

HUNTERSVILLE – On a deep, narrow plot squeezed between two neighborhoods on Gilead Road, Huntersville residents will find a museum of the weird, wacky, artistic and interesting at the home of Benny’s Yard Art and Welding.  

Residents aren’t likely to notice the sign welcoming them to Benny Reeder’s business. No, they’re much more likely to first notice his work, displayed on his front lawn, right at the edge of Gilead Road: Nine-foot tall dinosaurs made of shopping carts, 4-foot tall figures of men made out of car bumpers, a pair of metal palm trees and a multitude of other equally unique pieces.

Benny’s medium is metal – with paint thrown in occasionally for color – and his work, which now has been featured in several art gallery shows, began out of technical necessity. 

“It was on a dune buggy. A Corvair dune buggy,” 59-year-old Reeder said, sitting next to the wood stove in his workshop. He didn’t make the stove, but he did make it better, adding a reservoir for hot air on top, made out of a 55-gallon drum. 

“I just had to have something welded one night and there wasn’t anyone around to do it. I just had to learn how to weld or it didn’t get done.” 

Since then he’s learned stick welding, wire welding, and torch welding. “I’m pretty well self-taught in everything I’ve done.”

Benny produces strange artistic creations as one part of his business, and does fabrications and repair work as another. “I used to do paint and body – car work – but that slowed down too much. So I just started making stuff for people,” Reeder said. “I’ve always had an edge for making stuff for people.” This morning he’s working on a frame for a portable toilet that a construction contractor wants to move from job site to job site, but last night he fiddled with a morning star flail, a Medieval melee weapon with a spiked ball hanging from a chain. “I started (artistic work) back yonder when O.J. (Simpson) got in trouble,” Reeder said of his 1994 artwork. “I was on my way to Elizabeth, Tenn., to do an art show, and he was getting into that police chase, that’s the reason I remember.”

He has also made strange combinations of form and function. “I made a mailbox a while back for this guy; it looked like a big ‘ol catfish,” Reeder remembers. “The whole head pulls down, and you can’t even tell it’s a mailbox.” 

Waiting to be sold is a tailgater’s dream, a complete outdoor cooking rig ready to be hitched to the back of a truck that Reeder has dubbed the “Redneck Grill.” It has a barbeque, charcoal and restaurant-style grill, deep fryer, cooler, and a metal figurine driving at the front. Reeder’s own lawnmower looks like it could hold its own in a tractor pull, with two tall chrome mufflers and tires bigger than those on the average four-door sedan.

Reeder’s artistic approach and influences are simple, but make for amazing results. He often draws inspiration from movies. In the front yard he’s placed his take on the Batpod, Batman’s motorcycle from “The Dark Knight,” and his version of the Starship Enterprise that he can light up at night. “I just like weird stuff. If somebody else has got it, I don’t want it,” he said about his methods. “I like to make something up, you know.” Adding that last element of functionality to his work is a running theme with the yard art. The dinosaurs by the road have inconspicuous propane tanks nearby, and tubing connected through their skeletons up to their jaws to allow them to breathe fire. The biggest thing he’s sold was a functioning, powered merry-go-round.

Business is actually going well for Benny’s Yard Art Welding in the recession. He hasn’t seen a decrease in either his repair work or artwork. “I’ve been staying pretty busy. I’ve been pretty lucky,” Reeder said. “I figured I’d be doing good because people haven’t got money to buy anything, so they need to repair it.”

Benny is open for all kinds of jobs, and everything you can see from the road and more is for sale, anywhere from $5 for small art pieces up to $1,000 for one of the big dinosaurs. He’ll even take scrap metal off your hands. 

Who knows what he’ll do with it, he said, probably “make something weird.”

Want to buy some?

See Benny’s Yard Art by visiting his home at 9415 Gilead Road or call 704-875-2994.