{"person":[{"sourceId":{"label":"Source ID","value":"330"},"lastName":{"label":"Last Name","value":"Martin"},"endDate":{"label":"Death Date","value":"1986"},"displayName":{"label":"Name","value":"Eddie Owens Martin"},"objects":{"label":"Objects","value":[{"objectTitle":"Untitled","objectNumber":"2018.22.3","objectID":"6983"},{"objectTitle":"Untitled","objectNumber":"2018.22.2","objectID":"6982"},{"objectTitle":"Notebook","objectNumber":"2018.22.5","objectID":"6985"},{"objectTitle":"Untitled","objectNumber":"2018.22.4","objectID":"6984"},{"objectTitle":"Necklace","objectNumber":"2018.22.7","objectID":"6987"},{"objectTitle":"Untitled (hat)","objectNumber":"2018.22.6","objectID":"6986"},{"objectTitle":"Headpiece","objectNumber":"2018.22.10","objectID":"6990"},{"objectTitle":"Untitled","objectNumber":"1991.24.1","objectID":"815"},{"objectTitle":"Untitled (Handbag)","objectNumber":"2018.22.8","objectID":"6988"},{"objectTitle":"Bracelet","objectNumber":"2018.22.12","objectID":"6992"},{"objectTitle":"Bracelet","objectNumber":"2018.22.11","objectID":"6991"},{"objectTitle":"Bracelet","objectNumber":"2018.22.13","objectID":"6993"},{"objectTitle":"Untitled","objectNumber":"2018.22.1","objectID":"6981"}]},"geographyDied":{"label":"Died","value":["","Buena Vista","New York"]},"biography":{"label":"Biography","value":"As the first and only follower of a utopian new religion he called Pasaquoyanism, Eddie Owens Martin spread messages of a better future from a fantastic seven-acre art environment, still standing outside of Buena Vista, Georgia. Martin reinvented himself as St. EOM (pronounced \u201cOm,\u201d as in the traditions of Hinduism), dressed in homemade ceremonial garments, and wore hats decorated with feathers and cowrie shells over his uncut hair. Amidst the pine trees of his family farm, he built pagodas for rituals, connecting them with more than nine hundred feet of masonry walls adorned with concrete sculptures. The opulent, brightly colored, mandala-like patterns that cover this sprawling architecture were informed by Martin\u2019s interest in ancient Mesoamerican, African, and Native American cultures, as well as his belief in the legendary world of Atlantis.Martin was born in 1908 to sharecroppers in rural Marion County, Georgia. At fourteen, he left home and hitchhiked to New York. There he survived as a fortune teller and sex worker while also immersing himself in art at the city\u2019s museums and libraries. At outdoor art markets, he sold his watercolors and pen drawings; many resemble fashion designs, centering on figures in flamboyant outfits likely inspired by the drug dealers and drag queens he encountered living on the urban margins.In the mid-1930s, while feverishly sick, Martin had visions of beings from the future calling him to be reborn as a \u201cPasaquoyan.\u201d He returned to Georgia and started work on the Pasaquan site in the mid-1950s. In a 1984 conversation with the artist and collector Willem Volkersz, Martin described \u201cthe next new religion that\u2019s going to come into the world. . . . Something\u2019s got to give, something\u2019s got to come up into the world besides what we have now. . . . This organized religion is on the way out\u2014as I can see it\u2014because it doesn\u2019t serve the people\u2019s needs. People need to go back to being natural people, being themselves.\u201dThe Pasaquan Preservation Society was formed to care for the site after Martin\u2019s death, in 1986, and partnered with the Kohler Foundation in 2014 for a major collaborative restoration project. In 2016, Pasaquan and hundreds of Martin\u2019s works were donated to Columbus State University, with the goal of safeguarding St. EOM\u2019s legacy and his dream of using art to create a more beautiful and authentically individual world.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":["","Buena Vista","New York"]},"geographyBorn":{"label":"Born","value":["","Buena Vista","New York"]},"beginDate":{"label":"Birth Date","value":"1908"},"firstName":{"label":"First Name","value":"Eddie"},"textEntries":{"label":"Text Entries","value":"At the age of fourteen, Eddie Owens Martin found his way to New York City\u2019s Greenwich Village to pursue a life of adventure and culture, leaving his family\u2019s farm in rural Georgia. Supporting himself as a hustler, fortune teller, and waiter, he relished the company of drag queens, drug dealers, and other eccentric personalities, who became the subjects in his drawings. During an illness in 1935, Martin received his first vision from a futuristic, gender-bending alien who encouraged him to follow the \u201ctrue way,\u201d the path of a new religion called Pasaquoyanism. Thus, Martin became the world\u2019s first Pasaquoyan and began transitioning his identity from Eddie Owens Martin to St. EOM. He developed his spiritual belief system during his last twelve years of living in New York, and returned to his recently deceased mother\u2019s farm in the late 1950s. There, he worked as a card reader\u2014which he called \u201cthe poor man\u2019s psychiatrist\u201d\u2014for members of the local community and devoted himself for the last thirty years of his life to the construction of a seven-acre art environment called Pasaquan. Valérie Rousseau, exhibition label for Six Decades Collecting Self-Taught Art: Revealing a Diverse and Rich Artistic Narrative. New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2019."},"primaryMedia":{"value":"https://collection.folkartmuseum.org/internal/media/dispatcher/7375/full"},"names":{"label":"Names","value":["St. EOM","Eddie Owens Martin"]},"displayDate":{"label":"Date","value":"(1908\u20131986)"},"id":{"label":"Id","value":"150792"}}]}