An introduction to the artist
I’m Jo Howell, an artist interested in photography, printmaking, collage and the possibilities of making art from materials that might otherwise be thrown away. Much of my practice explores personal experience, identity and the physical traces that life leaves behind.
My work often begins with a question: What can I do with this? Rather than seeing unwanted or discarded materials as useless, I’m interested in treating them as a starting point for creativity.
Waste Ground grew from that approach, combining cyanotype, photography and collage with something much more personal: the empty medication boxes produced by my treatment for fibromyalgia. The resulting works are self-portraits, but they are also records of waste, illness, repetition and reclamation.
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What did I make?
I used the empty cardboard boxes from my medications as the starting point for a series of cyanotype artworks.
My practice already includes several series of works that are predominantly made up of self-portraits. Cyanotype gives me a way of combining photography and printmaking with collage, creating images that can be cut, torn, layered and reconstructed.
For Waste Ground, the medication boxes became both the material and the subject of the work. They are objects that normally have a very short life: they arrive containing something intended to help me, are emptied, and would ordinarily go straight into the bin.
Instead, I turned them into artworks.
The process allows me to print directly onto the cardboard, make additional cyanotype prints on different papers, and then bring these elements together through collage. The resulting portraits can be fragile, fragmented and sometimes quite forlorn. They reflect something of the experience of living with chronic illness, where identity can feel similarly fragmented or altered.
At the same time, there is something empowering about the process. The illness takes so much, so reclaiming the materials associated with it and turning them into something creative becomes a small act of resistance.
When was the work made?
The origins of this work go back to 2019, when I first started experimenting with ways of using the by-products of darkroom photography to make new artworks.
This began with a micro-commission from the Sustainable Darkroom. They sent me an empty box that had previously held resin-coated, light-sensitive photographic paper. Rather than throwing the box away, I deconstructed it and experimented with its different components.
Some parts became surfaces for printing directly onto, while others became substrates for collage.
That project was the first spark. It made me think about waste materials differently and encouraged me to explore what could happen when something designed for disposal became part of the artwork itself.
The later medication-box works developed from this initial experiment. This time, however, the waste was much more personal. Instead of photographic packaging, I was working with the cardboard boxes generated by my own medication.
What started as an experiment gradually became a series.
In fact, I hadn’t intended to create such a long body of work. Every month, my supply of medication is replenished, which means my supply of potential art materials is replenished too.
The waste keeps coming.
So do the artworks.
Who is the artwork for?
The first work made using waste materials was created in response to a commission for the Sustainable Darkroom. The later works using medication packaging were made primarily as a personal exploration of chronic illness.
In that sense, the work was initially for me.
Making the portraits became a kind of therapy. It gave me a way to think about what had been lost, changed or taken from me by illness, while also allowing me to reclaim something.
The work is also for anyone who has experienced chronic or invisible illness, particularly people living with conditions such as fibromyalgia, ME, MS and Long Covid.
Invisible illnesses can be difficult to explain. There may be little visible evidence of what someone is experiencing, even when their illness affects almost every part of their life.
By making the medication waste visible, I am making one small part of that hidden experience visible too.
The work is also for people who already have an interest in my practice, and for anyone interested in alternative photographic processes, cyanotype, collage or sustainable approaches to artmaking.
If the work starts a conversation about invisible illness, medical waste or the possibilities of working with discarded materials, then it has found another audience.
Why did I make this work?
The main reason I began this series was because I was horrified by the amount of medical waste I produce each month.
I take pills in the morning, pills at night, pills for pain, pills for sadness, and various vitamins to help with processing everything else. Each medication can arrive in a blister pack, inside cardboard packaging, and then inside a pharmacy bag.
It adds up.
The cardboard packaging is relatively easy to experiment with. I can print directly onto it or join pieces together using collage techniques. I can also print onto the pharmacy bags, which can look particularly interesting when held up to the light.
The blister packs are more difficult. They are made from a mixture of plastic and foil, which makes them difficult to print onto and, so far, I haven’t found a satisfying way of processing or reusing them.
That limitation is part of the story too. Not everything can magically become art. Some waste remains waste, and that is an uncomfortable reality of living in a world where so many of the things we need come with packaging that is difficult to recycle or repurpose.
Reclaiming something
There is another reason I continue to make these works.
Chronic illness takes things away.
It can take energy, time, independence, plans, confidence and parts of your sense of identity. Making these artworks gives me an opportunity to reclaim something.
The medication boxes are evidence of illness, but I can transform them into evidence of creativity.
That transformation feels empowering.
The use of self-portraiture adds another layer of vulnerability. It isn’t something I would ordinarily find easy. Putting yourself into an artwork means exposing something of yourself, and these images are inevitably connected to a body and a life affected by illness.
But there is power in that vulnerability too.
The works can feel quiet and forlorn, but they are also a form of rebellion.
They are real artworks made from rubbish.
In that sense, they are a small two-finger salute to the status quo of the art world: a refusal to accept that valuable materials have to be expensive, pristine or traditionally “artistic”.
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How to make a cyanotype artwork from medication packaging
You don’t need expensive specialist equipment to begin experimenting with this process, although you do need to take appropriate care when working with cyanotype chemistry.
You will need
- Cyanotype chemistry
- Paper
- Card
- Empty medication boxes
- Pharmacy bags
- Hole punch
- PVA glue
- Scissors
- A wash tray
- Water
- Somewhere to dry your work
- Pens, paints or threads for additional decoration
You can adapt this list depending on what you have available. One of the pleasures of this process is that the materials don’t need to be precious.
Methodology
Step 1: Choose your ground
Start by deciding what you want to make your artwork on.
You might work on a single flattened medication box, or you can join several pieces together to create a larger surface.
I often construct the ground first, particularly when I know I want to create a larger collage.
Think about the shape, colour and printed information already present on the packaging. These elements can become part of the final composition rather than something that needs to be hidden.
Step 2: Choose which side to print
Look carefully at the cardboard packaging.
Medication boxes often have a glossy printed side and a more porous reverse.
The glossy side generally won’t accept a direct cyanotype in the same way as the porous cardboard. The back can produce varying degrees of success, depending on the particular packaging.
This unpredictability is part of the process.
Don’t expect every piece to work perfectly. Some of the most interesting surfaces can come from experiments that didn’t behave quite as expected.
Step 3: Make your direct cyanotype
If you’re going to print directly onto the medication packaging, do that before beginning the collage.
Prepare your cyanotype surface according to the instructions for the chemistry you’re using, and expose your image using your chosen negative or object.
You can use photographic negatives to create portraits, as I have, or experiment with objects, textures and other imagery.
The cardboard itself becomes part of the image.
Step 4: Make additional prints
Don’t restrict yourself to printing onto the medication boxes.
I like to make extra versions of the image on a variety of surfaces, including:
- Brown paper
- Tracing paper
- Textured paper
- Book paper
- Card
- Other found or discarded papers
Each material responds differently to the cyanotype process.
These additional prints give you a collection of fragments that you can later cut, tear and layer into the main artwork.
Step 5: Wash and dry everything
Wash the cyanotypes thoroughly according to the requirements of your particular cyanotype process.
Allow the prints to dry completely before cutting them or attaching them with glue.
This is important because wet or damp prints can be difficult to work with and can interfere with the collage process.
Step 6: Cut and collage
Once everything is dry, start cutting.
I use scissors to create strips and fragments of the image, which can then be attached to the medication boxes using PVA glue.
You can also tear the paper instead of cutting it for a softer, more irregular edge.
Don’t be afraid of breaking up the image.
The portrait doesn’t have to remain whole.
Step 7: Consider composition and registration
This is where the printmaking element of the process becomes particularly interesting.
Think carefully about how the different sections of the image line up.
Do you want the eyes to register perfectly across two pieces of cardboard? Should the face be fragmented? Could one section of the image be deliberately offset?
The registration — essentially, how the different parts of the image align — can become an important part of the final artwork.
Perfect alignment isn’t necessarily the goal.
Sometimes the mistakes are the most interesting part.
Step 8: Work back into the image
Once the collage is assembled, you can add another layer of intervention.
I use text, paint, pens and thread to work back into the portrait.
This gives the image another life beyond the original photograph and cyanotype.
You could draw over areas of the face, stitch through the cardboard, obscure parts of the image with text, or emphasise particular features with paint.
Think of the cyanotype as the beginning rather than the end.
Step 9: Photograph your finished work
When you’re happy with the artwork, photograph it carefully.
I recommend using daylight and a plain white background so that the work is clearly visible.
Good documentation is particularly important if you want to share experimental artwork online. A well-lit photograph can show details such as texture, layering and translucency that might otherwise be lost.
The pharmacy bags can be especially effective when photographed with light passing through them.
Step 10: Share your experiments
One of the great things about alternative photographic processes is the community surrounding them.
Share your experiments, including the failures as well as the successes. Showing what didn’t work can be just as useful to another artist as showing the finished masterpiece.
Try using hashtags such as #Cyanotype, #Collage, #AltProcess, #SustainableDarkroom and #WasteArt to connect with other artists working in these areas.
Borrowing rather than inventing
I didn’t invent any of the techniques or methodologies used to create these artworks.
The process borrows from established practices including decoupage, collage, photography and printmaking. Artists have been printing onto found and discarded materials for a very long time, and I certainly wasn’t the first person to do it.
What interests me is what happens when these existing approaches are brought together with the particular materials generated by my own life.
The medication packaging gives the work its context.
The cyanotype gives it its photographic language.
The collage allows the image to be fragmented and reconstructed.
And the self-portrait brings my own experience of chronic illness into the work.
From waste to possibility
Waste Ground began with an empty box.
It became an experiment, then a way of working, and eventually an ongoing series of artworks.
For me, the important thing isn’t simply that I have found another material to print onto. It’s that the material carries meaning.
These aren’t anonymous pieces of discarded cardboard. They are the physical remnants of something that is part of my everyday life