'Iron Fish Guy' Chase Allen competes in Martha Stewart Made in America awards
At the end of a rural dirt road on Daufuskie Island is a modest cottage that is part residence, part studio and part art gallery. It's where the Iron Fish Guy lives and works.
On nearly every wall there is a colorful fish or crab or mermaid that the Iron Fish Guy -- whose real name is Chase Allen -- has coaxed out of plain sheets of steel.
Allen has become renowned for his whimsical metal sea life and has caught the attention of Southern Living, Coastal Living and Charleston magazines. He recently entered the Martha Stewart American Made awards competition and is a finalist for the Audience Choice Award, which has a $10,000 prize. The online competition was created by Martha Stewart to highlight small-business owners, artisans and creative entrepreneurs in the fields of crafts, design, food and style with the goal of supporting the local and the handmade. Internet voters will determine the winners.
Allen moved to Daufuskie 13 years ago and opened the gallery. Although he majored in business in college, it was a ceramics class he took as an elective that triggered a passion for working with his hands and a career as an artist. Because there was already a ceramics artist on the island, Allen decided to focus on metalworking, without fully knowing what he was in for.
"I was nobody," he said. "At first I'd get three or four people a week" visiting the gallery.
A few years later, Allen started working on a series of metal fish. Those sold quickly. Then he made a series of mermaids, which sold just as well. More people started stopping by in search of them. Allen created a website, and began getting flooded with online orders as well.
"As soon as I made the coastal-themed sculptures, that's when the magazines paid attention," Allen said. "I found my stride."
To start each piece, Allen sketches a design onto the steel. Then he warms the metal with a hand-held torch, shaping and forming it with hammers and mallets, followed by some welding of fins or mermaid hair. Then he paints the pieces and, as a final touch, rusts each item with saltwater to create a weathered look.
In the beginning of the business, Allen would bring two or three sheets of steel over from Hilton Head Island, draped over the bow of his boat. Now he orders 10,000 pounds twice a year that come over stacked on a barge.
The success isn't something Allen dwells on, however.
"My original goal was to make $5,000 a year, and now I'm making a comfortable living," he said. "But as an artist, you never take it for granted when you started so hungry."
Allen is hungry to win the Martha Stewart competition because he wants to donate 100 percent of the award money to charity.
If he wins, he'll give $7,000 toward Team Holmes, a fund set up for a friend whose son has brain cancer. The remaining $3,000 will be distributed to Doctors Without Borders, Alzheimer's Foundation, Ankylosing Spondylitis Association and to a scholarship for an aspiring teen blacksmith to attend a course at John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, N.C.
Follow reporter Erin Shaw at twitter.com/IPBG_ErinShaw.
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This story was originally published October 9, 2014 at 6:43 PM with the headline "'Iron Fish Guy' Chase Allen competes in Martha Stewart Made in America awards."