Excerpt:
...For many years, art collectors
and dealers have left the interstate highway north of
Gainesville, Georgia, at the exit to the Old Cornelia
Highway and followed the road to the unincorporated,
north-Georgia community of Rabbittown. They were watching
out for a seven-foot-tall cross with a tin bird nailed
to its center and flanked by rectangular signs roughly
inscribed, ‘Lord Love You.’ Behind the cross, crude
propeller blades on whirligigs made by local artist
R A Miller and planted on Windy Hill, spin and twirl
on gusty days. Following the road around the Hill, visitors
have usually encountered Miller at work in the outdoor
shop adjacent to his house, cutting out and painting
scores of figures from scrap lumber or roofing tin.
Every available exterior surface of his house-cum-gallery
is used to display works for sale.
Twenty years ago, when R A Miller was brought to the
attention of a wide audience through an Atlanta television
program and a music video by the internationally famous
rock group, R.E.M. who are based in Athens, Georgia,
the hill was covered with around 300 whirligigs. Most
had cutout-tin figures nailed to them. In recent times,
Windy Hill has been stripped almost bare by the hordes
of professional and amateur buyers drawn to the site
by Miller’s reputation as a maker of strange and wonderful
whimsical objects. Miller often welcomed all-comers
with ‘You’re too late. I ain’t got nothing left,’ gesturing
to a wall that only held a dozen or more tin cutouts
and drawings on a panel. Some years ago, a typical explanation
for what Miller considered to be the disgrceful scarcity
went something like this: ‘Feller from California come
in and bought pretty near a truckload of stuff from
me. And there was plenty of folks here before that.
Must be one of my things on every street corner down
in Atlanta. They don’t know it ain’t nothing but junk.’