Description

At the heart of this piece are portraits of five individuals within our greater Phoenix community who are caregivers to their loved ones with dementia, and who have generously chosen to share their stories.

Nestled in the center of these portraits is a mirror—of which the purpose is to encourage the viewer to see themselves within the context of caregiving and reflect. Many people do not consider themselves caregivers even though they are—people often do not think of themselves in those terms. Being a caregiver is sometimes hard to identify within ourselves, and it is important to think about how and who we surround ourselves with will change over time.

Smaller circles and threads of varying size and color are spread throughout the piece to represent social networks and diversity in the relationships people have.

Drs. Peckham and Guest chose purple as the main color of the piece, as they associate it with their research, and purple is the Alzheimer’s Association’s signature color.

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About the Process

Before Drs. Peckham and Guest and Ali met for the first time as an official team, they familiarized themselves more with each other’s work. Drs. Peckham and Guest provided a number of research articles such as “‘It’s More Than Just Needing Money’: The Value of Supporting Networks of Care,” as well as their current grant proposal, to Ali to review. While this was very helpful for Ali to understand their research better, she had many questions for them on how their research goals would translate to their specific goals for the art piece (What message and overall emotion do they want to convey?).

Through this questioning, the following conclusions emerged from Drs. Peckham and Guest: that it is paramount the piece is use-inspired, embodies kindness and compassion, and encourages people to think about the importance of their social support networks, how they change, and how they might themselves need care one day. While waiting at a bustling downtown Phoenix coffee shop, Ali sketched her ideas for the piece and sent them to Drs. Peckham and Guest. The team met again in person to discuss Ali’s ideas and decided on a clear winner. At this meeting, the team also agreed that if the piece was sold, they wanted to donate their portions of the sale to an organization that benefits caregivers, such as the Family Caregiver Alliance.

Over the following six months, the team’s efforts primarily focused on recruitment. Sage Sadow, an Arizona State University research assistant working with Drs. Peckham and Guest, played a significant role in this, helping to create a recruitment poster and draft questions for the caregivers. The team posed these questions because every caregiver’s journey is different, each with valuable experiences, and they felt this was important to show. As they recruited each person, Ali worked directly with them to obtain model release consent, reference photos for the portrait, and their responses to the questions posed by the research team. This piece has a personal element to Ali, as her maternal grandpa, who is a caregiver to her grandma with dementia, is one of the participants.

After recruitment concluded, the actual creation of the piece went relatively smoothly, with minor hiccups. Ali found that Photoshop was handy for visualizing and mapping out the placement of all elements within the piece before permanently nailing anything down.

More information including access to the interviews with caregivers can be found on ASU’s Open Science Forum.

Meet the Team