At one point in the late 1950s, during an extended and fever-ridden illness, Eddie Owens Martin experienced the first of a series of phenomenal visions that would drive his artistic efforts for the rest of his life.

In the initial vision, he was confronted by a trio of extraordinarily tall personages who identified themselves as people of the future—special envoys from a vaporous land called Pasaquan, "where the past, the present, the future, and everything else all come together."

He had been chosen by them, he later reported, to help us attain an understanding of the peace and beauty that the future might hold for mankind, if mankind would only take heed. On that day, Eddie Owens Martin of Marion County, Georgia, became, at least to himself, St. EOM - the one and only Pasaquoyan of the twentieth century.

Eddie Owens Martin left home at the young age of fourteen, after he saw his father kill a puppy that had been given to him as a gift. Eddie eventually settled in New York, working as "a male prostitute and minor-league hustler," and becoming a fixture of the emerging Greenwich Village arts scene, where he was nicknamed the Tattooed Countess. It was here that Eddie experienced his visions. Among the messages about "how to ritually prepare for the proper conduct of his personal daily existence" was that he was to "return to Georgia and do something."

That something is Pasaquan, an artistic environment built over thirty years, made of painted concrete sculptures and four acres (16,000 square meters) of painted masonry concrete walls. Pasaquan also includes six buildings, including a redesigned 1885 farmhouse. Inspired by his visions and smoking "a fat one" (a joint) Martin (or "Big Mama" as he known by locals in Buena Vista) single-handedly created an amazing, religiously symbol-laden, sometimes beautiful and sometimes lewd arts environment. After working on Pasaquan right up until illness made it impossible, Martin, at the age of 77, laid out an African chieftain's robe that he wished to be buried in and shot himself.

In his own words, Martin or St. EOM said of Pasaquan:

"I built this place to have somethin' to identify with, cause there's nothin' that I see in this society that I identify with or desire to emulate. Here I can be in my own world with my temples and designs and the spirit of God. I don't have nothin' against other people and their beliefs. I'm not askin' anybody to do my way or be my way. Although, when I'm dead and gone, they'll follow like night follows day."

Of course he also said:

"There's no place like this anywhere, and people will come and deface it when I die, and then everything I've done will be forgotten."

It remains to be seen which vision is the correct one.