Remembrance Memorial Charitable Trust

The Remembrance Memorial Charitable Trust was founded August 15, 2007. The mission of Remembrance is to engage communities in a shared art-making process that honors and acknowledges the sacrifices of U.S. Service men and women who have lost their lives while serving in the current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as to those who continue to serve. It is an active act of remembering.

It is the hopes of the Board of Trustees and the thousands who have brought their time, energy, financial support, and love to this very special living memorial that all U.S. Service members who have lost their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan will not be forgotten.  

     
 
 "...as the viewer, you move through the memorial, you don't walk around it, and since it is transparent you slowly begin to focus on the grid in front of you, yet remain aware of the hundreds of tiny traces beyond the focus of your vision, little echoes of others, a multitude beyond your immediate visual grasp.  The traces, the fragments of an all too recognizable figure, are suspended in time and space on the almost invisible grid, lines vertical and horizontal, precisely spaced; each fragment given their own boundary, dignity, distance; yet not isolated from the larger company of others.  

 The tiny forms draw you in - you must read the letters, sometimes only a half expressed name, sometimes none, sometimes whole - you see the wayward random stitches barely holding yet binding, an integral part of the forms themselves woven together from the most mundane, the most simple of objects: buttons, textile fragments, organic material, and a teabag, the latter bearing the profound significance of ritual, healing and ancient culture.  As focus shifts to the larger body of the work, the sheer numbers begin to creep into the conscious mind - hundreds, then thousands of figures, images, suspended as the lives of those they represent have been suspended, forever. Yet this uplifts somehow - knowing that each trace has been rendered by hand and heart and eye." 
Victoria Matheson, Curator, Cherry & Webb Gallery, Fall River, MA 

                                  
  figure above created by Gold Star Father John J. VanGyzen III at the MAC center workshop