Gordon Stevenson’s Lost Work Discovered
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- Gordon Stevenson’s lost work, including jewellery, collaborations with mail‑art pioneer Ray Johnson, and clues to a surviving print of his film Ecstatic Stigmatic, was uncovered in a storage unit.
- Stevenson’s family recovered hundreds of letters he wrote to his parents, documenting his life in downtown New York’s demimonde and his status as one of the city’s first AIDS patients.
- Stevenson was a multi‑disciplinary creator in late‑1970s New York, known for his no‑wave cinema, jewellery design, and music, and was a central figure in the era’s underground scene.
- Stevenson and his partner Mary Kathryn Cervenka (Mirielle) married at a Florida rubbish dump on July 4 1976 and moved to New York in 1977, where low rents and the city’s turmoil fostered artistic freedom.
- Barbara Stevenson says her brother “always belonged in New York,” underscoring his deep ties to the city despite his Southern upbringing and early education at Eckerd College.
Why it matters: Art historians and LGBTQ+ archivists gain a rare cache of hundreds of Stevenson letters and lost works, enabling new exhibitions and scholarship that will deepen understanding of no‑wave culture.
