Melvin Way

Statement

Born 1954, Ruffin, South Carolina. AKA - Melvin “Milky” Way
Disability: Melvin Way suffers from schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, diabetes, and heart disease


“A Symphony Vortex”

“His drawings are a mixed salad of chemical equations, prophecies, angels rehearsing a plan that makes no sense to the common man”
andrew castrucci

I was born and raised in South Carolina, my ancestors and prerequisites lived in slave territories, I eventually moved north to New York City.
All my works have to go thru emissions, baptisms, and transmigrations before I release them into the stratosphere, I carry 500 drawings at a time in my raincoat, and they go thru rain sleet and snow, sometimes staying in my pocket for 6 months at a time.

I studied math, geometry, chemistry, algebra, calculus in high school. My constituents Sun Ra and Isaac Hayes have Parliamented approval of this message.
I worked at a machine shop in Mexicana oPus when I came to New York.
A mental breakdown in the 1980’s, moved me to Wards Island from Manhattan State Psychiatric Hospital and later to Fort Washington Men’s Shelter, institutionalized in Siberia and conondrom half my life, now I am 63 years old. In Manhattan State Hospital Thelonious Monk played piano for me (he didn’t realize I was listening), we shared an auditori transmition room on the 19th floor.
My county professor and attache at Wards Island started showing my work to grand wizards, presidents, counts, and prime ministers of Mannahatta.
Now my work is all over the world, in many museums, libraries and territories like antartica, the Kremlin and all my 52 commonwealths.

What I am is a Confluence pulsar tower now; my signals, notes, and diagrams has crossed every ocean and sea in the world. Prophesized every prediction in total truth in 2001 when the world was inverted. Barry White, George Clinton, Ramalzee, and Africa Bambata saw me there, the only ones who could read my crytologized (invisible ink) notes. I want to travel from North to South America, in between Alaska especially since I purchased my degree from University of South Carolina (in record breaking Time) in coca-nada research. I could of bought a brand new pink Cadillac but I snorted all the snow in Alberta Alaska and when she came outside with sunrays on her cheeks in distant mountaintops but they said I have a lean on my car. I’m now having trouble getting a passport.

A mystic visionary genius, one of the greatest living American artists.
Melvin Way makes knotted diagrams of numbers, letters, lines, and arrows that look like alchemical equations. These amazing things which may one day be loved the world over, conjure some of the mystical 666 names of God
Jerry Saltz

* please note Melvin Way’s artist statement was left unedited.

Tungsten Untitled Untitled Untitled
Tungsten
1991
ink on paper & scotch tape
8.5" x 11"
Untitled
1999
ink on paper & scotch tape
6" x 8"
Untitled
2000
ink on paper
7" x 7"
Untitled
2012
ink on paper & scotch tape
4" x 6"
Keal#5 H2=CH2 Status #23 Neplus
Keal#5
2015
ink on paper & scotch tape
7" x 8"
H2=CH2
2016
ink on paper & scotch tape
3" x 6"
Status #23
2014
ink on paper & scotch tape
3" x 6"
Neplus
2016
ink on paper & scotch tape
6" x 12"