Columbus State University News
Pasaquan receives $100,000 Ruth Arts grant, welcomes Azikiwe Mohammed for artist residency
September 8, 2025
Columbus State University has received a $100,000 project grant from the Ruth Arts Foundation to fund residency programs at Pasaquan, its visionary art environment in Buena Vista, Georgia, created by Southern artist Eddie Owens Martin. The grant will support innovative artist residencies that honor Martin’s legacy while engaging students and contemporary artists with his artwork.
Pasaquan will welcome Azikiwe Mohammed as its latest artist-in-residence funded through this grant. Based in New York, Mohammed has been featured in group exhibitions at MoMA PS1, the Museum of the African Diaspora and the California African American Museum. He has also presented solo exhibitions at the SCAD Museum of Art, Knockdown Center and Anna Zorina Gallery, among others. His work was also highlighted in the PBS series Art21.
During his Pasaquan residency, Mohammed will engage with Eddie Owens Martin’s legacy through practices that include painting, video, sound and commerce. He will also collaborate with Columbus State art students—creating an exciting opportunity for them to connect with his multidisciplinary vision.
“Columbus State students benefit greatly from working alongside acclaimed professional
artists like Azikiwe, through which they expand their perspectives by directly engaging
with innovative contemporary practices,” said Mike McFalls (pictured), director of Pasaquan and a professor in the university’s Department of Art. “We’re thankful to Ruth Arts and other generous arts patrons who enhance our arts
education programs and inspire our students.”
Funding from the Ruth Arts Foundation addresses the evolving needs and lived experiences of artists, communities and organizations whose work is rooted in the visual and performing arts. It honors its benefactor Ruth DeYoung Kohler II (1941–2020) with inventive approaches to philanthropy that are rooted in creativity, experimentation and access.
Admission to Pasaquan is open to visitors most Fridays through Sundays for a suggested donation. For more information about its programs and touring the site, visit Pasaquan’s website.
About Pasaquan
Eddie Owens Martin (pictured), later known as St. EOM (pronounced “ohm”) by his Pasaquoyan
devotees, established the visionary art site Pasaquan in the 1950s—inspired to do
so by a fever-induced vision from the future that instructed him to leave New York
and to return to his native Georgia and “do something.” That “something” became the
immersive, internationally recognized, seven-acre visionary art environment in Buena
Vista.
He developed his “mock-Precolumbian psychedelic wonderland” known as Pasaquan on his late mother’s farm over 30 years. The artscape includes six buildings—structures with mandala murals along with pagodas, a kiva and vibrantly colored totem poles—adorned inside and out with vibrant colors and bold patterns comprised of human figures and nature imagery. The remainder of the space includes a thousand feet of elaborately painted masonry walls that combine Pre-Columbian, African and Native American symbols with a 1930s New York City aesthetic, and that connect the buildings and thousands of St. EOM’s other artistic artifacts.
Since 2014, under Columbus State University’s stewardship, Pasaquan has become recognized as one of America’s most significant visionary art environments and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. St. EOM’s legacy continues to grow through exhibitions at institutions including the American Folk Art Museum and High Museum of Art, an international artist residency program, and CSU’s archives, where students and scholars engage with his artistic work and concepts. For more than a decade, Department of Art students and faculty have worked alongside the Pasaquan Preservation Society to restore and steward the site, develop arts programming, and maintain a Resident Artist Program.
Main image: the entry gates to Pasaquan with an inset headshot of Azikiwe Mohammed (headshot courtesy of the artist)
Media contacts:
- Charles Fowler, Program Coordinator, Pasaquan, fowler_charles@columbusstate.edu
- Michael Tullier, APR, Executive Director of Strategic Communication + Marketing, 706.507.8729, mtullier@columbusstate.edu
