FAIRHOPE, Ala. — Charlie Lucas, popularly known as “Tin Man,” will be in Fairhope April 2 to open his exhibit “New Visions” at the Eastern Shore Art Center.

His work has attracted a large following, and has been included in numerous exhibitions and museum collections.

He will also be on hand to sign his book, “Tin Man,” at the Art Center during First Friday ArtWalk this week, from 6 to 8 p.m.

As an adolescent, Lucas had worked as a farm machinery operator and had learned repair and welding skills on heavy equipment.

Using that skill, Lucas conceived the idea of creating a distinctive, whimsical mailbox from the scrap metal parts that were plentiful around his house. The result was an iron man with a mail receptacle tucked under his arm. It became the talk of the town.

Encouraged by people’s reaction to his new mailbox he gradually made other figures.

His artwork came in all sizes — towering to miniscule. There were gigantic men and 12- to 15-foot dinosaurs made entirely of spot-welded steel ribbons and 10- to 15-inch men and animals made from railroad spikes, bent wire and other pieces of scrap metal.

Although he has no formal art training, Lucas’ sculptural work clearly combines skills he learned from observing his grandfather’s mechanical and automotive repair techniques, his grandmother’s basket weaving and his great-grandfather’s blacksmithing.

In addition to creating three-dimensional sculptures, Lucas also paints. Indeed, painting was his first artistic endeavor. But he found that painting did not bring in enough money to support his family.

As in his sculpture, humor is frequently the underlying theme of his colorful paintings, which combine realistic and quasi-abstract elements.

Lucas says, “I go to … the scrap yards. I go to dump sites. And I want kids to see this thing — I don’t want them to see it in the shiny … newness of it. I don’t even attempt to paint so much of my work. I leave my sculptures natural … because you want the kids to see that (our) whole society is not shiny and pretty, glamorous as we pretend it is, because it’s not. If we … really peel ourselves back and look at the true part of ourselves, we would be some of the ugliest things you want to see.”

Lucas lives and works in a remote community in Autauga County, Ala., where he and his wife, Annie, raised their six children in a house built by Lucas himself.

The exhibit will be on display through May 1.

Also exhibiting in April “The Courtyard and Beyond.”

For more information, call (251) 928-2228.