Tender Tender is a mixed-media exhibition of text-based sculptural works about a series of caregiving relationships that involve a contract, a series of payments, and a decision to leave and never return. Gallery visitors engage with the work through depositing quarters in vending machines, and read text that is delivered in a variety of storytelling systems, including several book-like objects: pedestals, acrylic books, framed and printed candies, vended objects, motorized pill bottles, and video and computer screens. This document contextualizes Tender Tender within a canon of contemporary art and sociological research, and examines how this work contributes to creative discourses surrounding, care, loss, identity co formation, and tools for creating interactive text-based work.