NEWDATINGGAME2: Artist or?

Tensor- a dazzling 8-by-10 foot wall of 64,800
LED multicolored lights.
Kevin McCormick’s work was shown in some local galleries

By Sally Jacobs, Globe Staff December 11, 2005

Emily Chew, then an 18-year-old freshman at
Simmons College was stunned
by what found at one of his parties.
A few minutes later, the party's host,
Kevin D. McCormick, known to his friends as
''Frostbyte," appeared at her side
and said,
''You don't look like you're having a very good time.

"McCormick, an MIT-trained engineer and highly
regarded artist, led her to a far wall.
He flipped a switch and thousands of lights erupted
into a shimmering band of color shaped like a rainbow.

''The whole crowd just stopped and looked,"
recalled Chew.
''The entire room went quiet.
McCormick, was found dead in Warehouse 23 last month,
He was a young man drawn to the edge, always pushing
beyond the conventional limits of knowledge and sensation.
When police found McCormick's body Nov. 13 in the
Congress Street warehouse where he lived,
he was surrounded by chains and wetsuits
props, evidently, for erotic activities.
The 29-year-old, who was openly gay, had died of a heart
attack during sex. Two of the men who shared the
warehouse space told police he had taken ecstasy
-- his drug of choice, according to several friends
-- a few hours earlier.
Another of McCormick's friends who had been in the
lab, and who asked not to be identified, said
McCormick made drugs only for himself and his
close friends and did not sell them. He told only a
few about his hobby; most who knew him knew
nothing of the lab at all.
What they did know about him was that he threw
an amazing party.
Over the years, the parties at Warehouse 23 grew
steadily larger, attracting a disparate group of artists
and MIT graduates and techies.
Although the parties were strictly by e-mail invitation
only, the waiting line to get in often stretched far
down Congress Street and people were frequently
turned away. McCormick's following was growing.
''He just loved wowing people," said a friend.
''That is what he lived for.He liked giving people these