Joel Sokolov

Joel Sokolov, an artist who lived in New York City throughout his childhood and the AIDS epidemic, talks about how witnessing death that young, to that extent, impacted him. Although noting that he doesn't remember many specifics of that time due to it being so overwhelming, he emphasizes how grief wasn't something you could escape because you needed to be there for those that were suffering. Art, though, was an outlet for his grief, to some extent --- he painted a series of candles and a series of portraits of beautiful dead people just after the deaths of his friends. Despite its horror, the epidemic enabled him to understand that time is invaluable and art should priority over fame or fortune.