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

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.”