Melvin Way AMERICAN, 1954-2024

Melvin “Milky” Way’s work occupies the uncharted border between art and science. Born in South Carolina, Way came to New York City in the 1970s to attend a technical school, earning a certificate to operate a power press. He played bass in local bands and recorded a solo album with Encounter Records, which folded before the album could be released. Soon after, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, and following a string of unsuccessful relationships, became homeless.

By 1989, Way was residing in the shelter run by Hospital Audiences International, a nonprofit organization offering art workshops to people with disabilities. Lower East Side artist Andrew Castrucci, a volunteer workshop leader at the time, encouraged Way to make art, and acted as his advocate during subsequent years. Way soon began to produce small, exquisite ballpoint-pen drawings on found paper, which are strikingly complex. Rich hybrids of scrawled text, mathematical equations, astronomical shorthand, chemical formulas, and alchemical punning, each work is marked by the artist’s signature, thrillingly dense sensibility. Way engages both the eye and the mind, drawing viewers into exquisite mysteries that may never be solved. “I felt like I was seeing another kind of infinity, thought made visible, wild nerves, optical barnacles coming to hermetic life, delirium legible,” wrote New York Magazine’s senior art critic Jerry Saltz in a 2015 review in Vulture. 

Melvin Way’s works are held in 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 Smithsonian Museum of American Art (Washington DC), and the Centre Pompidou (Paris). His art has been featured in many group exhibitions including “Schema: World as Diagram” at Marlborough Gallery, New York (2023), “Self- Taught Genius” at the American Folk Art Museum (2014), and “Alternative Guide to the Universe” at the Hayward Gallery (London, 2013).