Artists for Pasaquan

Time for a road trip! The cool weather has returned, and those crisp mornings are calling… Dust off your rucksack and grab a travel coffee mug and a worn-out college sweatshirt!

On Saturday, November 3, 2007, Pasaquan will host artists from all around the South for an exciting day of creative celebration at an event called “Artists for Pasaquan”.

Fifty or more artists – students, amateurs, professionals, eccentrics, visionaries – will participate in the celebration. The varied conglomeration of sympathetic artists will join together at Pasaquan to demonstrate their support for the restoration and preservation of the noted visionary art site. Participating artists will bring their own recent artwork to show and to sell and a lineup of musician friends of Pasaquan will entertain those who attend the gathering.

“Passa-what?” you say? Well, according to Jonathan Railey at Flagpole Magazine:

If you haven’t heard that name before, well, suffice it to say that he’s just about the weirdest cat you never met – so weird he refused to be airbrushed, alloyed, snow-jobbed or beaten into conformity by the forces of authority that get to most of us early on. So bizarre that he took to the open road rather than subject himself to the tyranny of a cruel and oppressive father. So eccentric that when he finally settled down, he tried to make a homestead for himself that suited him and embodied his highest ideals…

Looking at the art at Pasaquan, you immediately get the feeling that you are in a tribal place, sacred, communal. The sense of interconnectedness with nature, philosophy, the human experience pervades.

There is quite a bit of information available online about Pasaquan and Saint EOM (née Eddie Martin), including writeups by Mike Segers and
Interesting Ideas, and there was even a PBS Special!

I should be getting some good pictures, so more on this after the weekend!

Where is it? (Click for Gmap love) Near Buena Vista, GA (between Columbus, GA and Americus, GA), which is also home of Georgia Rural Telephone Museum.