As I shuffle through golden leaves and make my way into West Dean's Dilke House, I'm intrigued by the short course taking place in the ground floor studio in this beautiful corner of Bloomsbury. Tetrapak is a word I'm used to seeing as I toss the orange juice carton in the recycling bin, however, short course tutor Jane Fox is making the claim that it can be used for printmaking.

As we chat before students return from lunch, Jane expands on this claim, “the results are really quite similar in look to etching so you can get some quite sophisticated results from really humble materials”. I’m fascinated to know how she discovered that packaging from an oat milk carton otherwise destined for landfill or recycling centres could be used to create such distinctive prints.

“Basically, during lockdown, a lot of people were trying to work out how to keep printing from the confines of home. So we got really interested in lo-fi printmaking, jelly plates, tetrapack printing, all kinds of different things just to try and keep on working during that time.”

Having seen the work created by students before observing the preceding process I was amazed by how simple techniques could yield such effective prints. “Tetrapak cartons have this lovely surface that has got a silvery colour and you can scratch it, pierce it, cut into it and pull away the silvery bit to reveal a furry, cardboard underneath. All of those different kind of marks, you can push ink into and it will hold the ink and you can put it through the press”.

Watching Jane teach, it’s clear that she is incredibly passionate about sharing her knowledge and love of printmaking. Coffee in hand, she explains what it is she loves about this art form. “The thing I personally just adore about printmaking is that it's a really particular way of image making that really engages with process. The process will motor you along, but it will also throw up ideas as you're going. There’s a famous phrase with print makers which is the ‘happy accident’ - the thing that happens that you weren't expecting that you love that you can then embrace and do deliberately. It's often quite physical and a little bit witchy!”.

The simplicity of printing with waste material encapsulates the flexibility of this medium which Jane loves. “Print can inhabit all kinds of places; it can be lowbrow, highbrow, really cheap, super expensive, you know? Bus tickets through to high-end up print.”

It’s clear from my time in the studio that this process is incredibly immersive, meditative even, I ask Jane why she thinks coming on courses like this one is so important. “I think that art making and creative activity is just really crucial to human well-being. At West Dean: Sussex and here in London, I feel the arts are just valued, it's in the air that you're breathing. I think it's a lovely atmosphere for a really crucial human endeavour.”

And so, not for the first time after popping my head into a West Dean short course I find myself franticly searching for upcoming courses run by Jane and doing a quick eBay search for intaglio presses. There’s something magnetic about the creative energy on these short courses and in an age of endless social media consumption, I find myself compelled to unplug and once again explore that ‘crucial human endeavour’ – making.

For our full programme of short courses click here.