An archive of lost work by Gordon Stevenson, a key figure in New York's no wave scene, has been discovered in a storage unit, offering a new perspective on the artist, musician and jewellery designer. The cache includes his collaborations with mail-art pioneer Ray Johnson and clues to the whereabouts of a surviving print of his notorious film Ecstatic Stigmatic. Stevenson's family have also recovered hundreds of letters he wrote to his parents, chronicling his life in the downtown demimonde and his experiences as one of New York's first Aids patients.
Stevenson, who died four decades ago, began his journey in the small town of Dublin, Georgia. A maths prodigy, he rejected a scholarship at Georgia Tech to attend Eckerd College in Florida, where he met Mary Kathryn Cervenka, later known as Mirielle, and her sister Christine, who renamed herself Exene. The couple married at a Florida rubbish dump on 4 July 1976 and moved to New York the following year, where they survived on Mirielle's income from a vintage shop.
In New York, Stevenson's jewellery brand LHOOQ sold through boutiques such as Fiorucci and Saks, repurposing vintage trinkets for the punk market. His memento mori series, featuring crosses and skulls, anticipated gothic fashion. Musically, he played with Lydia Lunch's Teenage Jesus and the Jerks, described by photographer Julia Gorton as 'really intense, abrasive, not friendly – just a perfect band'.
His sister Barbara Stevenson notes that his letters home, often scrawled on the back of his artwork, reveal a complicated relationship with his parents: 'Gordon was justifying and defending his lifestyle, something our parents never accepted.' Designer Maripol recalls the freedom of New York at the time: 'The city was very destroyed by the drugs and violence. But there was that freedom. Creative people could afford to live there.'
The newly discovered archive promises to restore Stevenson's reputation as a mover and shaker in the no wave movement, rather than a mere footnote in others' stories. Friends and family hope it will cast new light on a star of the New York demimonde who was 'depraved in all the right ways'.
