A Powerful Dose of Art

“Got any Xanax?”

The question is posed to an unlikely drug-dealer in the form of Altadena resident Susan Braig, an angelic-looking, silver-haired woman who speaks softly and radiates kindness. And no, she’s not some shadowy demimondaine dealing dolls (props to Jacqueline Susann) in a parking lot. She’s an artist who states, “I have to sell drugs to pay my medical bills. Health care should not be a luxury.”

Earlier this week we met with Braig at her airy duplex home-studio near the Altadena Town and Country Club. Huge windows fill the hundred-year-old space with natural light, and carpeting and three layers of linoleum have been ripped up to reveal the original hardwood floors, now immaculate once again. A Rubens-esque calico cat named Soccer sniffs at my feet, and feline-themed artwork finds a prominent place on the walls and shelves.

Woman's open hand in foreground motioning toward a table-top covered with pills and jewelry-making supplies. — Susan Braig’s colorful candyland of pills-as-art. Photo: Victoria Thomas

The Xanax in question, along with a rainbow of other prescription pills, OTC medications and medical paraphernalia including hearing aid batteries, unused syringes and diabetes lancet caps, are the raw materials of Braig’s unique jewelry-making art. At the upcoming Pasadena Bead & Design Show, attendees can snap up early holiday gifts at Braig’s booth in the form of affordable jewelry composed primarily of pills, ranging from Schedule Two prescription tabs to OTC supplements.

Braig came to create these provocative pieces following the unwelcome surprise of a stage two breast cancer diagnosis in 2004, when she was 54 years old. “At first, it was a routine mammogram, with routine results,” she said. “I never felt a lump, because the penny-sized tumor was deep down, close to the chest wall.”

But things turned quickly. A phone call from her doctor the day after her mammogram led to an ultrasound and biopsy, which confirmed a cancer diagnosis. “My first thought,” she recalls, “was ‘will my insurance cover this?’”

jewelry made with pills — Examples of Braig’s pill jewelry. Photo: Victoria Thomas

It’s an obscene question nearly every American asks when confronted with a serious illness. Braig called her insurance carrier to confirm that, after satisfying her $2,500 deductible, the rest of any needed procedures and care would be covered. The answer was bureaucratic, amounting to “Not really.” Some aspects of her chemo and radiation treatments qualified for coverage, while others did not: “For example, the anti-nausea pills my doctors recommended cost $500. For 10 pills.”

As Braig sank deeper and deeper into medical debt, from $10,000 to $20,000 and beyond, she had a mental flash of a Tiffany & Co. store window, where fabulously beautiful ornaments were set with pills in the place of gems. The metaphor is archetypal, since in the ancient world as is the case today, drugs were viewed as gifts from the gods.

The oldest known representation of a deity found in Gazi, near Knossos, Crete dates from 1400-1100 BCE in the form of a Minoan female figure, perhaps Rhea or Demeter, crowned in the plump seed-pods of the opium poppy. On the other side of the pond, the Inca chewed coca leaves as a way of communing with the Creator, and the Aztec honored the powerful lord of healing Patecatl by chewing the sacred peyote button, a ritual practice which migrated into the American West and is now present in the Native American Church.

Museum case displaying Minoan goddess figurines — Opium poppies crown the heads of Cretan terra cotta figurines, the oldest known depictions of a deity. Photo: Wikimedia Commons / Archeological Museum of Heraklion

While our society righteously and unsuccessfully conducts its decades-long war on drugs, the fact is that America runs not on Dunkin’, but on insulin, ibuprofen, naproxen, aspirin, Warfarin, Lipitor, Zocor, Metformin, Skyrizi, Jardiance, Rexulti, Ozempic, Prozac, Cymbalta, Wellbutrin, Zoloft, Paxil, Rybelsus…and you can stop me any time now. An evening of television-watching feels like a crash-course in pharmacology as insufferably perky actors sing and dance about lowering their A1C, etc. in the form of unrelenting advertising campaigns.

Although we may not literally identify our drugs as gifts from deities, we do revere their god-like properties. Indeed, doctor-researcher Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin in 1929 earned his mold-derivative the deserved and sorta religious-ringing moniker of “miracle drug.”

Two necklaces crafted from plastic syringes, displayed on velvet neck forms — Like it or not, drugs are the money shot. Syringe necklaces by Susan Braig. Photo: Victoria Thomas

Braig interprets this as a tremendous irony. Pills are the lingua franca of modern wellness. An old Yiddish parable reminds us “A healthy man has many wishes, the sick man has only one.” For Braig and anyone coping with a major health crisis, medications indeed seem like gold, and often require much of the same to acquire them, even when insured.

She discovered Health Care for All – California and began enshrining pills in jewelry as a way of articulating their elevated status in our society as precious objects.

“I became an activist. In this way, cancer was the best thing that ever happened to me. I had to grow up, face facts, take control. Not just to make myself well, but to comment on what was happening with me, and millions of other people, through my art.”

A chain on a table — Is Sildenafil actually Tiffany blue? Who knew. Photo: Victoria Thomas

Braig’s eloquent self-expression attracted the attention of local lawmakers, and she testified in front of the Assembly and Senate regarding the need for health care reform. Of her appearances in Washington D.C., she says “I had never been that alive.”

As we sit at her dining table, she knocks wood as she says that she is symptom-free in terms of cancer. She keeps close watch over her health with regular six-month check-ups, as well as an annual mammogram and ultrasound. And she says “Cancer and diabetes will never be cured. These diseases are a cash-cow for Big Pharma. And as consumers, we are forced to make terrible choices regarding how to address cancer and other illnesses. The risks and side-effects are not to be underestimated.”

Woman working at table-top making jewelry — Years of making miniature assemblages prepared Susan Braig for her current art form. Photo: Victoria Thomas

Sitting at her worktable, a converted computer desk with a slide-out keyboard drawer, Braig riffs like a jazz musician, improvising the design of each earring and pendant without a sketch. Each piece is one-of-a-kind. She tells me that she’s long been an assemblage-artist, adding “I once made a miniature of the Sistine Chapel inside a cat-carrier.”

Her workspace is stuffed with bags of expired or simply unused drugs sent to her by followers, round, square, rectangular, oval and oblong tablets and gel caps as bright and colorful as a Halloween candy bowl. Braig in turn delivers pills that she chooses not to use to her local pharmacy. Pharmacies typically incinerate these medications through a licensed medical incineration site, a disposal technique more environmentally sound than flushing the pills or dumping them in a landfill according to the Environmental Protection Agency.

Braig’s technique is cold-solder, or gluing, and requires no heat. Pills are set into costume jewelry findings and are occasionally paired with random hardware and found objects like vintage belt-buckles and zipper-pulls, then coated with resin for a hard, glossy finish. All items are wearable and denatured, sealed, glued and no longer usable as drugs or medical supplies. Her wry brochure reads: “Dosage: Do not ingest orally, only aesthetically and conceptually.”

pills made into earrings — Ready to go dancing. Photo: Victoria Thomas

“I enjoy making things, and I enjoy talking to people about why I make this jewelry,” says Braig. Some New Age types shudder at the sight of the playful pharmacopeia, not realizing that Braig is hardly a cheerleader for the global drug behemoths that produce the pills.

“Other people sense the irony, and we have a good laugh about it.”