Lives Shaped by Steel by Nancy B. Zastrow

B o o k  C o n t e n t

(Content from previous page with Dillon photo)
Michael Dillon's reputation for creating incredibly beautiful railing and architectural iron features is a natural consequence of the work he produces. "I enjoy creating pieces that make people take a second or third look, trying to figure out how we did that, where the joints are, how it got put together." It will take two or three or more thorough examinations to even begin to find those answers, because Michael makes sure that everything that leaves his shop in Roswell lives up to his fine reputation. His shop, like his work, is spacious, clean, and clear with well defined work areas and a minimum of clutter, a design that can efficiently expedite large projects.

Michael has always been interested in large scale iron work. He graduated from Kansas City Art Institute in Missouri in 1990, and moved to Atlanta in 1993 because his wife, also an artist graduate from Kansas City, wanted to return to her roots, "Atlanta is a land of opportunity," he says, "I'm glad to be here."

He intended to be a sculptor and finds the architectural iron work fully satisfied that artistic side of him. "There are set parameters in traditional ironwork," he says. "That makes it easier than sculpture." Whether it is called sculpture or curved railing, however, his unique blend of artist-metalworker comes through. His excitement and passion for the work he does shined through his quiet, understated persons. "The design is 85% of the success of a piece," Michael asserts, and he says that he tells his clients, when they ask, what will work in the situation they bring.