LOVING A LIVING MEMORY CONCEPT NOTE
Living a Loving Memory is a deeply personal, autobiographical exploration of caregiving,
vulnerability, and the enduring bond between a mother and son. By blowing up my
mother’s cancer treatment receipts onto large-scale canvases, I transform sterile
medical archives into a profound physical space for reflection. These receipts, once
markers of financial sacrifice and agonizing waiting periods, serve as the foundational
landscape where charcoal figures and delicate textures converge.
Into this heavy visual narrative, I introduce the meticulous, labor-intensive practices of
hand embroidery and seed beadwork, specifically using them to render healing plants
like green and red amaranthus. In my community, textile arts are traditionally coded as
feminine skills. During my mother’s illness, visitors would frequently ask why there
wasn't a girl to help with her intimate care. Her unwavering response was always:
"Trevor, my son, does everything I would need from a girl to do for me."
For me, the act of embroidering becomes a quiet, repetitive performance. It is a physical
manifestation of the labour, profound patience, and emotional weight that defines the
reality of a boy child stepping into a non-traditional caregiving role. Every stitch and tiny
bead is an intentional, slow process that mirrors the long hours of waiting and the gentle
devotion required to nurse a loved one..
Beyond personal grief, this work advocates for a deeper sense of community and
communion. By bringing the private, often hidden labour of caregiving into the public
eye, I invite viewers into a shared space of collective empathy. The incorporation of
healing plants represents a communal connection to nature and traditional knowledge,
transforming the isolation of illness into a shared ritual of healing. Ultimately, this body
of work bridges the gap between the clinical harshness of a hospital and the warmth of
a maternal sanctuary, grounding personal trauma in a broader, universal experience of
human connection.