In the months following her mother’s death Rosie , Davis searched for a way to funnel her grief into something that would honor her mother. She found the inspiration she needed in an unlikely place: a Facebook page run by a teenage artist in New Jersey.
The page, Faces of Covid Victims, features a collection of drawings and stories honoring hundreds of people who have died because of COVID-19. Each is drawn by 16-year-old Hannah Ernst, whose grandfather died in May of the coronavirus. His portrait was the first she drew.
Davis reached out to Ernst, and helped bring her work to North Texas in the Yellow Heart Memorial, a new exhibit at the Irving Archives and Museum.
Part art exhibit and part memorial, the display features Ernst’s portraits of more than 200 lives lost to the pandemic. They are mothers, fathers, grandparents, children, brothers and sisters.
One portrait shows a man holding a fish. Another waves hello. They wear cowboy hats, nursing scrubs, favorite t-shirts, suits and ties. Some show couples, shoulder to shoulder. There is Davis’ mother, wearing a birthday tiara and sash.
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