Mapping pain

Each page of the three Chronics features four vertically-oriented panels floating on an otherwise empty page.  Leavitt uses brush pens for her artwork and a firmer pen for her text.  Black and white are dominant, but occasionally the pages pop with a wash of intensifying color. In Chronics Number 1, these panels are filled with bold vertical lines, inscribing the accompanying text with a visual imprint of how she experiences her partner’s continuous pain. These lines record the ways both D. and Leavitt’s own experiences drip in a fixed sequence over nights and days. A brief interlude at the doctor’s office resumes with the return of these same lines, now rotated in their orientation: different, but the same.