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.
