Steve Mendelson

These drawings layer a remarkable amount pen marks, covering almost the entirety of each sheet. In the work on the left, Steve Mendelson left small amounts of paper unmarked, allowing the crescent moon and bolts of lightning to appear to glow against the dense black ink. Both works come from a larger series of drawings responding to the ancient Celtic “Song of Amergin,” the earliest known spoken Irish poem. Mendelson worked on this series between 1988 and 1994, during the early years of the HIV/AIDS pandemic. A gay man, Mendelson himself became HIV-positive during this time. The spirituality, pain, and beauty in this series illustrate a sublime world, offering an affective visual elegy in the presence of so much loss.