{"person":[{"sourceId":{"label":"Source ID","value":"2226"},"lastName":{"label":"Last Name","value":"Nelson"},"endDate":{"label":"Death Date","value":"1992"},"displayName":{"label":"Name","value":"Melvin Edward Nelson"},"objects":{"label":"Objects","value":[{"objectTitle":"6. The octopus begins crushing the earth something terrible","objectNumber":"2017.3.10","objectID":"5587"},{"objectTitle":"1. The octopus first emerges as a whirl. The \u201cplanetary band\u201d is at upper right","objectNumber":"2017.3.5","objectID":"5589"},{"objectTitle":"10. The octopus is whirled and hacked to pieces","objectNumber":"2017.3.14","objectID":"5588"},{"objectTitle":"3. The mighty umbrella over the top of the earth","objectNumber":"2017.3.7","objectID":"5591"},{"objectTitle":"7. Two forces at work","objectNumber":"2017.3.11","objectID":"5590"},{"objectTitle":"9. Seeing the end of the octopus but the advent of the serpent","objectNumber":"2017.3.13","objectID":"5593"},{"objectTitle":"8. The octopus puts a terrible squeeze onto the earth below","objectNumber":"2017.3.12","objectID":"5592"},{"objectTitle":"11. Aftermath: A few weeks later, a big whirl encircles the earth","objectNumber":"2017.3.15","objectID":"5595"},{"objectTitle":"4. The octopus prepares to crush the earth","objectNumber":"2017.3.8","objectID":"5594"},{"objectTitle":"5. The earth becomes squeezed in a terrible vise","objectNumber":"2017.3.9","objectID":"5597"},{"objectTitle":"12. Greater earthquakes are still to come","objectNumber":"2017.3.16","objectID":"5596"},{"objectTitle":"Circle #2 3/12/63/12:46 AM","objectNumber":"2017.3.17","objectID":"5599"},{"objectTitle":"2. The great umbrella over the top of the world changed into a great octopus","objectNumber":"2017.3.6","objectID":"5598"},{"objectTitle":"The Bumble Bee","objectNumber":"2021.18.29","objectID":"8312"},{"objectTitle":"The Flying Saucer Recorded Aug 29th 1963 \u2013 9.11 \u2013 P.M.","objectNumber":"2021.18.26","objectID":"8086"},{"objectTitle":"Circle #3","objectNumber":"2017.3.18","objectID":"5600"},{"objectTitle":"Recorded June 8th 1963 11.04 P.M.","objectNumber":"2021.18.27","objectID":"8087"},{"objectTitle":"Untitled (10 unframed pages)","objectNumber":"2021.18.20","objectID":"8080"},{"objectTitle":"Untitled","objectNumber":"2021.18.19","objectID":"8079"},{"objectTitle":"Notebook (\u201cFiller Book\u201d)","objectNumber":"2021.18.22","objectID":"8082"},{"objectTitle":"Notebook (\u201cGolden West\u201d)","objectNumber":"2021.18.21","objectID":"8081"},{"objectTitle":"Notebook (\u201cLivewire\u201d)","objectNumber":"2021.18.24","objectID":"8084"}]},"geographyDied":{"label":"Died","value":["","Colton"]},"biography":{"label":"Biography","value":"Melvin Edward Nelson\u2014who signed his name on his work as M.E.N. (Mighty Eternal Nation)\u2014made art to transmit his visions of planetary and cosmic phenomena. These drawings, often created in series, record the artist\u2019s scientific approach to the metaphysical. For instance, <em>Octopus<\/em> comprises twelve drawings responding to the 1964 Great Alaska earthquake, the most powerful recorded earthquake to hit North America. A biomorphic form ominously appears and then encircles Earth with its tentacles; Nelson writes on the final scene, \u201cGreater earthquakes are still to come. Greater than the world has ever seen since the creation of time. Outer space is layed [sic] out like a mess of cobwebs and you see it as such. At another perspective angle you see space as round circles, layer on layer.\u201dEach drawing was inscribed with the date and time it was made. Although some of the soft hues in his art came from watercolors, he would also grind pigments from rocks and soil that he collected at night from what he believed were UFO landing sites. This earthy material gave his work an extra level of connection to terrestrial energy as he created celestial landscapes and abstract pictograms with which he attempted to visualize the unknowns of the world and beyond.Nelson was born in 1908 in Michigan and later moved west to Portland, Oregon. Starting around the 1950s, he lived mostly in isolation on a hilltop farm in Colton, Oregon, a rural community in the Mount Hood foothills. He used the space to experiment with his electronic inventions, such as a \u201ccyclotronic generator\u201d for levitation and an \u201canyzager\u201d for astral projection. In the 1960s, he began to create small paintings reflecting on the connections between the macrocosm of the universe and the microcosm of its atomic structures. He was inspired by both pop culture and the spiritual, and he pored over issues of <em>Popular Mechanics<\/em> and <em>Popular Science<\/em> as well as theosophy tracts. As he once stated of his work, \u201cThese pictures are of the worlds of Tomorrow, with the design and creation of the mightiest of atoms.\u201dNelson died in 1992; his farm and its contents were sold after they were acquired by a real estate investor. Although he never shared his otherworldly work with the public, the notebooks he left behind reveal his process of making art to express the cosmic from the materials under his feet. Allison C. Meier, 2025Text written as part of \u201cRethinking Biography,\u201d an initiative supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS)."},"geographyActive":{"label":"Active","value":["","Colton"]},"geographyBorn":{"label":"Born","value":["","Colton"]},"beginDate":{"label":"Birth Date","value":"1908"},"firstName":{"label":"First Name","value":"Melvin"},"textEntries":{"label":"Text Entries","value":"Known by the acronym M.E.N. (Mighty Eternal Nation), Melvin Edward Nelson created in a relatively reclusive mode from his hilltop seventy-acre farm in Colton, Oregon. In addition to using watercolors, he painted with handmade pigments from crushed soil and rock samples dug up on his property, mixed with water. This material, in his view, was impacted by the energy of electromagnetic fields. The marks formed on the surface of a specific artwork are, in his words, \u201ccaused by the tremendous force of the speed of the planetary atom burning its imprint into the surface of the Earth.\u201d In that regard, Nelson\u2019s artistic practice stood as a blueprint of invisible phenomena, as he incidentally became the witness of a \u201cpulsing world\u201d with its impalpable dynamics. Nelson was familiar with edgier spiritual practices. Magazines like Popular Mechanics and Popular Science were bible, along with theosophy tracts and science fiction magazines. He approached the metaphysical with a scientific manner.Nelson tended to work in series, developing themes from one page to the next. He meticulously marked each drawing with the date and time of its execution. One of these groups, referred to as the \u201cOctopus\u201d series, is composed of twelve drawings created before, during, and after the most powerful recorded earthquake in U.S. history\u2014the Great Alaska earthquake of magnitude 9.2, on March 27, 1964, at 5:36 pm local time. Nelson must have seen the earthquake coming, transcribing the sequential development of the disaster as it was forming. The first drawing of the series was executed on June 24, 1963, when Nelson recorded a \u201cwhirl\u201d in space. On its back is written: \u201cThe planetary band and all that is in it is God\u2019s great mighty and beautiful crown. The vast eternity of space is his body. The World below is his footstool. The World in its Whirl and its actions is his desire.\u201dA phrase on the back of the work created on March 27, at 4:31 pm, says that the many feelers of the Octopus \u201care extending millions of miles out into space. He [the octopus] was laying very quiet. All at once his body gave a twitch, then the spinning world below started to whirl very fast. . . . My god, how the earth shudders and shakes it is almost breaking up. Now he is releasing his hold. Now you can see the huge crack in the earth where he fractured it with his mighty squeeze. It is coming from the east across the top of the world and makes a turn and comes down the coast of North America. . . . With this mineral and my process there will be nothing impossible with man on earth.\u201dObservations about his acute connection to the living space sur- rounding him are also found in scrapbooks. On September 1, 1963, he wrote, with his typical modus operandi: \u201cI am always driving ahead into the future I am the present.\u201dValérie Rousseau, \u201cMelvin Edward Nelson. Tracking the World in Its Whirl,\u201d in <i>Vestiges & Verse: Notes from the Newfangled Epic<\/i>, ed. Valérie Rousseau (New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2018)."},"primaryMedia":{"value":"https://collection.folkartmuseum.org/internal/media/dispatcher/8611/full"},"names":{"label":"Names","value":["M. E. N.","Mighty Eternal Nation","Melvin Edward Nelson"]},"displayDate":{"label":"Date","value":"(1908\u20131992)"},"id":{"label":"Id","value":"151410"}}]}