We are truly honoured to have received more than 100 contributions from people who have opened their hearts and trusted us - tenderly folding precious items of clothing and honest expressions of love and loss into envelopes, boxes and bags that became treasures we received through the spring and summer of 2007.

Click here for List of Collecting Loss Contributors

This Gallery contains a portrait of each item of clothing along with passages from the stories. It is our hope that contained within you will find a thread that touches you, comforts you, perhaps helps you to understand what a friend, co-worker, family member may be going through, and gives us all encouragement to be together in life, love and in honouring the dead.

The Collecting Loss Gallery represents a small part of what will be included in a public art exhibit and accompanying book coming in late 2008. The clothing you see here will be taken apart and sewn together to form new items of clothing. Just as the telling of our stories and the weaving of them together can bring about change within us, so too will these clothes be changed as we say out loud: "We remember."

Please subscribe to receive updates as Collecting Loss continues to take shape and finds a home with a gallery and a publisher.

All photographs were made by photographer, Michael O'Brien, with art direction by Karen and Esther. We gratefully acknowledge Michael's extraordinary talent, heart and soul, along with that of webmaster, Mark Dininio, and musician, Mike Bégin, each of whom have worked with us to form this Gallery.

We welcome your responses. Please contact us to share and help us to reach more people by telling a friend about this site.

This project is supported by