It’s been a couple years since I started getting creative with medical waste. Health scares have come and gone, but this concept has stuck around. I’ve kept the practice of casting pills in resin on the back burner of my experiments — partly because I thought I needed an actual burner in order to get rid of the bubbles.

When I first attempted to cast pills, I didn’t try to get rid of these imperfections. Taking heat to prescription pills (some of unknown origin) in order to pop bubbles seemed like a potentially dangerous idea. So the air pockets encased my pill design like a chrysalis molded around misshapen folds of tape. I realized in my second go, I would have to be very careful with the tape or get rid of it altogether. And I needed to do something about the bubbles.

This design came out of a relationship fail. On the last night I spent with this lover, we pooled our pills in the kitchen. I arranged this mandala on a bed of green tape while he assembled a salad. I was dieting — resigned to the fact I wouldn’t be able to switch off a medication that was hiking my blood sugar and pushing my A1C into diabetic range. I had tried many medications at this point and he had as well.

I have no idea what his discarded pills were to him, but mine were mostly ones that had caused too many side effects. Both in pretty terrible mental states at the time, he and I called it quits with some vague idea that we might get back together when we were “better.”

I took this little art project and split it apart into different color layers on Photoshop. With the help of a British risograph studio, I created the cover for a zine with the theme of “MULCH.” You can buy a digital or audio version of the zine on the remote body shop.

The writing workshop facilitator who conceived of this anthology described the theme as “composting, mulching, breaking down to rebuild, resting, fallow moments.” It honors crip time — resistant to hustle culture and its deadlines. I was certainly in a moment of breaking down to rebuild, but I wouldn’t be doing the rebuilding with the same person after we’d “taken our break.”

My second go at casting pills occurred about a year later when I was at the end of another relationship. Nixing the tape and scattering the pills, I willed them to fall as they would. Haphazardly, I attempted to get rid of bubbles with a toothpick. This one had as many imperfections as the first. It looked frozen, like a thick block of ice.

Without the tape, it maintained a mostly square shape — I could hold the lumpier side from the back and show off a flat surface on the other. The tablets sank to the smooth side, flush with the square mold, and the capsules floated to the top of the unruly side. I was more satisfied with this object and threw away the other.

I’ve felt luckier in love lately. Several months ago, my current partner paid his friend on Discord to chat endlessly with me about epoxy resins. We started talking resin back in July when it was far too hot in my parents’ garage to consider working there with noxious fumes. This partner provided me with a pink respirator mask.

The friend goes by the name “Binge” and produces decorative resin keycaps from his artisan studio collective. He takes tips via ko-fi. These caps are collected by mechanical keyboard enthusiasts and placed lovingly on less frequently used keys. They’re also cool to look at off the keyboard. My partner organized the June Keycon which took place this past year in Washington, DC.

Things are getting more serious in this relationship and maybe could in my art making as well. I see my vision for art congealing and cohering with the rest of myself. My health is improving. I am building. I have finished the Artist’s Way!

But I’m feeling a block around dropping the money it will take to buy the proper resin to do what Binge has been advising me. Rather than cast the pills in molds, he suggested that I will get rid of the pesky bubbles if I coat the medication individually instead. Prop the cast pills up on sharp toothpicks stuck into styrofoam and let them set. Then sand off the edges once it’s cured.

This gives me a whole new playground — I can glue the cast pills to other surfaces and create more complicated designs. But my hope with working with medical waste has always been that it would make art materials more cost effective. If you enjoyed reading this article and want to support my work, you can donate towards the $93.85 will take to buy the proper resin to make my art.