Cleaning Bottles for the Sculpture

Peggy - in her father's lab coat - scraping the first layer of label off a pill bottle.

This is one amazingly big job! Imagine washing 2000 small pill bottles so that the label goop is all gone. I think its time to move on to something than than water and elbow grease as I have worn my fingers to the bone and just wore down the skin on a visitors hands. I should have a warning sign out front - Watch out - Bottle Washing in Progress. No one is excluded!!

I started looking at the pill bottles and thought about all the different HIV/AIDS medications I've taken over the past 17 years. I know at one time I took 49 medications a day - there was AZT at one time and 3TC.  And those big horse pills DDI - the ones I convinced the Dr. B. to reduce my dose to a teenager's dosage.  But the one that makes me laugh is ritonavir. For a while the capsules couldn't be formulated and we had to drink the stuff. I put it in a shot glass and downed it gently - like a glass of sherry. So the idea of cocktail parties across the country isn't that far from my wacky reality.

I have had some help from friends on this project and really am impressed with the technical  support I am getting from local and international businesses.  I have to admit that I am scared. The next step is irreversible - gluing the bottles onto the form-work that you see in the background of the picture. Fear is a healthy thing sometimes - makes us think things out carefully.  Soon I'll post that I have started gluing - but at the moment I have house guests and want to keep the air fume free for them.

Thanks for following the post. A very special thanks to one of the other Kingsbrae artists who invited Cathy and I to stay with he and his family while traveling.  Thanks too to the anonymous donor who made a $25 donation for the Cross Canada Cocktail Tour to Vancouver Island PWA.