Melvin Way

Untitled, c. 2004
Ballpoint pen and tape on paper
Unframed: 3 x 3 inches (7.6 x 7.6 cm)
Framed: 14 1/4 x 12 3/4 inches (36.2 x 32.4 cm)

Selected by The Drawing Center

Melvin Way (b. 1954, South Carolina; d. 2024, South Carolina), who recently passed away at the age of 70, was living in a men’s shelter in New York City in the 1980s when his work was discovered by his instructor at an art workshop there. Way was using ballpoint pens to make small drawings filled with chemical and mathematical formulae, abstract designs and cryptic words and phrases. His personal system of meaning may be indecipherable to the casual viewer, but a close-enough glance indicates a fervent attempt to divine the secrets of the universe.

Melvin Way’s drawings have been featured in many group exhibitions including Glossolalia: Languages of Drawing at the Museum of Modern Art (New York, 2008), Alternative Guide to the Universe at the Hayward Gallery (London, 2013), Approaching Abstraction (2008), Self-Taught Genius (2014) and Once Something Has Lived It Can Never Really Die (2016), all at the American Folk Art Museum.

His art is held in prestigious private and public collections including the American Folk Art Museum (New York), the Museum of Modern Art (New York), The Collection de L’Art Brut (Lausanne), the American Visionary Museum (Baltimore), Treger Saint Silvestre (Porto), the Collection abcd (Montreuil, the Smithsonian Museum of American Art (Washington D.C.), and the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris).