Creator Record
Images
1 of 1977
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Eddie Owens Martin (St. EOM), c. 1975. Columbus State University Archives.
Metadata
Artist |
Martin, Eddie Owens |
Category |
env builder |
Biography |
Eddie Owens Martin (1908-1986) Eddie Owens Martin created a highly-decorative world of his own in rural Georgia. Martin grew up in Buena Vista, Georgia, as the son of sharecroppers. At the age of fourteen, he ran away from home to New York City where he worked odd jobs to make ends meet, including tarot card reader and prostitute. It is also in New York that he developed his art practice. During an illness in the 1930s, Martin had a vision of deities from the future who told him he was going to become a "Pasaquoyan" named St. EOM. In 1957, Martin permanently returned to Georgia, moving into the family home he inherited, and began altering the house and grounds to pursue his newfound religion. Influenced by his research of the temple complexes of pre-Columbian Mexico and the fabled lost continents of Mu and Atlantis, he embellished temples, pagodas, shrines, walls, and walkways with brightly painted, oversized, concrete totem faces, whirling mandalas, giant undulating snakes, and variously styled nude figures. After Martin's death in 1986, the Pasaquan Preservation Society cared for the site, and in 2008, Pasaquan was added to the National Register of Historic Places. In 2014, the Pasaquan Preservation Society, Columbus State University, and Kohler Foundation, Inc., preserved the site. It was gifted to Columbus State University for long-term stewardship. After the preservation, six-hundred works by Martin including paintings, works on paper, textiles, furniture, and jewelry were gifted by Kohler Foundation to the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. In 2017, works by Martin were part of Pasaquoyanism: Eddie Owens Martin + Jonathan Frederick Walz. Martin's work can also be found in the collections of the High Museum in Atlanta and the Albany Museum of Art. |
