Arts and Culture

Late artist’s Pasaquan compound in S.W. Georgia to be preserved

The southwest Georgia art environment known as Pasaquan welcomes visitors to an otherworldly place of painted masonry, stacked bricks and temple-like buildings. Created by the late artist Eddie Owens Martin, the site will be preserved by Wisconsin s Kohler Foundation, it was announced this week. AJC FILE PHOTO
The southwest Georgia art environment known as Pasaquan welcomes visitors to an otherworldly place of painted masonry, stacked bricks and temple-like buildings. Created by the late artist Eddie Owens Martin, the site will be preserved by Wisconsin s Kohler Foundation, it was announced this week. AJC FILE PHOTO
By hpousner
June 6, 2014

By Sally Hansell - For the AJC

A meticulous preservation of Pasaquan, the visionary art environment created by the late Eddie Owens Martin, is set to begin, the Kohler Foundation announced this week. Once the two-year restoration is complete, the property will be given to the Columbus State University Foundation for programming directed by the university’s art department.

From the mid-1950s until his death in 1986, the self-taught Martin, known as St. EOM, created a phantasmagoric compound on seven acres around a family farmhouse he inherited near Buena Vista, about 30 miles southeast of Columbus. Tom Patterson, a writer and authority on folk art, has described the site — with its brightly painted concrete walls, walkways, totems, temples and pagoda — as “a sort of mock pre-Columbian psychedelic wonderland.”

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