Melvin Way by Sophia Cosmadopoulos

In collaboration with Summertime, co-founder Sophia Cosmadopoulos, interviewed American self-taught artist Melvin “Milky” Way, alongside his longtime friend Andrew Castrucci. This is an edited version of the interview.

Melvin Way (b.1954) is an artist from South Carolina, whose work occupies the uncharted border between art and science. His drawings include scrawled text, mathematical equations and chemical formulae. Until its closure, Way worked out of HAI New York, a non-profit organisation offering arts workshops to people with disabilities. Way's work has been the subject of a solo exhibition titled Melvin Way : a vortex symphony at Christian Berst Art Brut, Paris , and is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

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Sophia Cosmadopoulos: Hi Melvin, it is such an honour to meet you. I am so thrilled to talk to you about your work, I have always admired it. Do you mind if I ask you some questions, starting with you introducing yourself? 

Melvin Way: I’m Melvin Way. Sometimes they call me “Black.” I’m also Melvin “Milky” Way, that was my candy bar name a long time ago.

Sophia: And Andrew, it would be great if you would introduce yourself as well. 

Andrew Castrucci: My name is Andrew Castrucci. 

Sophia: And so how did you both meet?

Andrew: I was working at HAI, I started in the late 80s. So I met Melvin Way on Wards Island in 1989, that was the beginning of our friendship. And then Melvin got transferred to Colombo Hall and then Fort Washington. And then he went to the Bronx. 

Melvin: Andrew was coming doing art critiques, his sessions, at my building number one, the Keener Building. So I met him and we discussed things. I told him I was already an art scholar, public school to high school. You know, all those years, I was always steady in art class and getting scholarships. Then after time went by, I didn’t lose them, they were all published and notificated, you know? 

Andrew: Do you remember the basement of Wards Island in the Keener Men’s shelter? Remember we worked in the basement together? 

Melvin: Yeah, that’s where I met you. On Wards Island I was studying. But then Andrew came along and I started going to art, so there wasn’t nothin’ wrong with it. I wanted to learn about the streets, I didn’t know anything about the streets, street life, all I could remember was about music and certain things about karate. But being amnesia, I was learning, I had no idea that I was already the mayor of the city until I became governor of Rockefeller here in New York. I was governor three times. Then back amnesia again, by myself again.  

Andrew: Melvin, you have a way with words! I’ve always said you are a poet, you should have your own dictionary. He’s giving you the runaround a bit. Melvin wasn’t the mayor, but maybe he should have been. They should at least name a street after you in New York, call it “Way’s Way.” 

Sophia: I love that, Way’s Way. So you met Andrew on Ward’s Island, and where did you go after that, Melvin?

Melvin: Until I got the SROs connected, you know Single Room Occupancy. Kitchenettes. I had to do all that.

Sophia: Most of your work is made with a ballpoint pen and I notice you draw a lot on found objects. What are your favorite materials to work with?

Melvin: I like binder paper. Sometimes I might buy a sketchpad or a notepad, but apart from that, I don’t think about that. I use my canvases though, I have been really wanting to start painting again. I got seven scholarships for painting. I used to do paintings, brushes, dowels, dowels are paint brushes, okay? I don’t think about nothing but how to get it done and to the surface and to have it clean. I just wanna do it for fun. 

Sophia: Can you explain your work to me in more detail?

Melvin: It is inside the looking glass, the mirror. Like 22-7th is a large number in the universe. If they find out that I went inside the looking glass through the computer and did this, it’s called physical science, okay? 

Sophia: A lot of your work includes formulas, particularly the formula to cocaine. Can you explain that?

Melvin: I gave them the formula and I taught them how the cadaver formula is, you know. Plus I showed them the formula for the antidote for herpes, rabies, scabies, pneumonia, all at once. I gave them the formula for that. I do the formula for cocaine, LSD, Caffeine. 

Andrew: Yeah, and you are a true surrealist besides the math and the chemicals and secret formulas. I like the way Melvin’s work also deals with eroticism. I mean, there's always love in there, too. There's always dirty graphics, you could call it. 

Sophia: Yes, tell me about love and eroticism in your work. 

Melvin: I don't know what love is, but eroticism means being extremely horny, right? I write on the back of my drawings. Sometimes I write “erotic stimuli.” My drawings will make you perform a striptease or walk around on those streets. Streaking they call it. It'll get you nude, get you horny, make you do all types of things. It’s a dossier, a cocaine file dossier. Are you going to let it stay secret?

Sophia: Do you want your work to stay secret? Do you like showing your work to the public?

Melvin: It's all secret. I was skeptical about that for a long, long time. 

Sophia: How do you decide when a drawing is finished?

Melvin: Well I appraise it myself, but I used to submit them to myself in the past when I had all my facilities and income intact. So what I was doing was listening to myself working. But these drawings knock out cancer and keep knocking it out. Professors and deans and medical students and all that, they be coming looking at my work and be knowing what I’m writing about, you know, they actually be knowing. Everything is a game. 

Sophia: I am mostly familiar with your monochromatic drawings, but you also work in colour. Do your colours reflect a certain mood?

Melvin: I saw on the computer, the anatomy. I use the green for anatomy. The green is also cocaine and red, and blue is cocaine. 

Sophia: I look at your work and it seems very lyrical to me. You are a musician right? Does that play into your art?

Melvin: Yeah I play everything, I play about twenty two instruments. But now I am stuck to bass guitar, guitar, drums, the keyboard, basic combo, rhythm section. And everything else is God.

Sophia: Many of your drawings are covered in tape, can you tell me why that is?

Melvin: Yeah, because I figured that you might wanna work with them, so to keep anybody from tampering with anything, I put a crystal on there. I used to do that, I used to compress it. The Cadillac Mercedes compressor, if you see a little sports car, you know what I was doing with that, I was compressing with an iron. To make it one solid crystal. 

Andrew: It also has to go through this baptism too. You know, he’s carrying this stuff in his raincoats, and sometimes they’re in his pocket for a year or six months. Sometimes they get wet in a rainstorm and the ink bleeds, they get weathered. 

Sophia: Melvin, how long do you keep your drawings in your pockets?

Melvin: Sometimes, most of the time. Just for habit. Depends on how much food I am preparing because I am ingesting the equations. 

Sophia: I see some of your work is burnt, what’s the story behind that?

Melvin: I was trying to crystalize them. They got burnt by the microwave. 

Sophia: You put your drawings in the microwave?

Melvin: Yeah. So the ink doesn’t smear. But this is how I took on the crack addicts and the crack junkies. 

Sophia: Do you believe your drawings have a sacred quality?

Melvin: Yeah. They're sacred. They're all unknowable. Too intellectual.

Sophia: The first time I saw your work was at the Outsider Art Fair, do you like attending the fair?

Melvin: I’ve been going to that fair for like 12, 13 years. I came from South Carolina. 

Sophia: Do you identify with the term “Outsider Artist”?

Melvin: I think I am being inverted, inside out. That’s what I think about that, inside out. Inverted. But like in prison when the dude has a long term. They sit them down and they eat and they get inverted, like a skinny little dude might get all muscular and huskier. They get inverted. 

Sophia: Where do you see your artwork in the future? Where do you want it to be?

Melvin: Well it has to be in the medical society. What do you call it, catalogs or directories? That’s where it has to be put because medical students know what I’m writing. And college classes. 

Sophia: I hope to see it in more catalogs one day too, Melvin! Thank you so much for your time, it’s been a pleasure. 

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This is an edited version of the interview that was recorded in January 2019. To date, the full interview has not been published.

Banner image is a detail from Melvin Way, Schwahn, c.2010.