Item description
A pen drawing on a blue, cyanotype-printed background. The bottom half of the piece has a horizontal print of a single flower with five petals that overlap each other, a thin stem, and at the bottom of the stem a set of leaves that reach upwards. Above the flower and to the right are three text messages: the first, “One of my best and oldest friends found her boyfriend dead tonight from a heroin overdose”; underneath that “This disease is alive and well”; and finally “I’m so grateful you’re still here with us and you’re clean”. Each text message is on a light blue text bubble with white lettering. Next to the piece on the right are the name and the words “Moriah LeFebvre”, “Untitled”, “Ink drawing”, and “2020”.
Image | 2024
Works In Rough Going: Recovery Community and Communication During the Pandemic 7
Moriah LeFebvre
The drawings in this series contain words collected and curated from text message exchanges between members of the recovery community during the COVID-19 pandemic. I paired their messages with the images that these words evoked for me when I took the time to sit with them. Text messages are fleeting and digital; they aren’t meant to last. Yet during the pandemic, these pixels on screens became lifelines. I wanted to honor them, to memorialize them and commit them to permanence, deliberately and slowly. I hand drew all of the pieces in this series, sometimes taking the further step of using the sun to expose and create cyanotype prints of the drawn images.
