'I’m addicted to pattern' - tutor Sarah Burns on printmaking
We sat down with Sarah Burns after her 3 day course on block printing with natural dyes to her learn about her practice, her obsession with pattern and the importance of exploration.
Can you introduce yourself?
My name's Sarah Burns, I'm a pattern maker and I’ve just been teaching a short course on block printing with natural dyes here at West Dean.
What does this course involve?
Day one you’re mordanting fabric, you're making up your dye paste, which is seaweed and lovely, natural earthy colours. Then you're starting to explore the world of patterns, so we don't go straight to cutting your block, we're more about exploring what pattern means to you. How you can play with it, how your block can collaborate with you. It's not about imposing something on the block, it’s about becoming open to the possibilities of the block, which are immense, endless, eternal!
If you're not using a block on day one, what are you using?
Well, at this time of year, we've got all the root vegetables out to carve in, we’ve got your swedes, pumpkins, parsnips, carrots, cauliflowers. Then we've got lovely found objects that we have printed with; I've got a massive box of found things, leaves, sticks, butter pats and combs are brilliant. We explore mark making and get confident with it and learn to see the fabric as your canvas. It's not just a flat piece of fabric to fill with endless repetition. It's about becoming more expressive, more confident.
I’ve seen that confidence change over this course, the difference between where people started on day 1 and where people end on the final day feels like worlds apart.
Absolutely, people realise their own pattern language, one student made these beautiful compositions which had an ancient feel to them, she didn't do a single repeat pattern. This course is not only about repeat, it’s about freeing yourself from that. We had other people who printed with very fine blocks who got brilliant results. People combining brushes with vegetables, people using found objects with blocks. I did encourage everyone to cut a block, but then how they used it was up to them. Obviously at the core of it, I will teach you how to make a successful fabric print because that's what the course is but there's so much more to explore. I want people to go away and want to carry on printing. I want to share my expertise from doing it for over a decade and for them to go off and do it in their own way. I’m addicted to pattern and I want them to be as addicted as me.
What do you find addictive about it?
It’s a way of understanding the world and it's like retuning your vision, isn't it? You can tune out the noise and tap into the underlying patterns, and it's a really safe place to be, it’s unifying.
I imagine using natural dyes and seasonal vegetables also makes it quite an organic process, one that provides a connection to the season and the land?
Exactly, one of my students who had come on one of my foraging and natural dying courses just wore clothes that she had naturally dyed. They were brilliantly bright coloured clothes, and on this course she discovered how she could bring the patterns in from the outside onto her fabrics. It's not about a literal translation, it's more realising an abstract language that you can communicate with anything. It's not about a product, it's about a connection between you in the world and the people that look at your patterns.
I think that's what I'm learning about at West Dean, it’s not necessarily what you take away at the end of the course, it’s the process.
It's the process. That process is so deep and, as a teacher, my process is changing all the time for my own practice. That's why I like coming here and sharing the new things that I've learnt, well it’s not new, I'm drawing on a really ancient tradition of chintz making. Chintz is from Southern India and you're mordanting with minerals and printing with vegetable. It involves lots of different layers, different stages, it's a very ancient way of working, and on this course, you just get a little taster of a couple of those stages.
Do you think natural dyes appeal given our increased awareness of climate change?
Definitely. There’s a big return to vegetable printing because the impact of aniline dyes, which are derived from tar. So as we transition away from carbon, it'll be less available. There's so much interesting new work around growing natural colours through fungus that eat waste. There's loads of really cool new technology, and textiles in general are just such an exciting place to be with new and regenerative fibres like flax and hemp. It’s very exciting.
I can certainly see the appeal of foraging for local sources of dye especially when you learn about how harmful the industrial dyeing process can be.
Yeah, I've worked in factories all my life and I've seen how all those beautiful fabrics you see in world of interiors are made and how they’ve really been printed. That's actually how I started my own practice, because everyone has terrible skin conditions, tons of white spirit is pumped down the drains into the water. They look so beautiful, but they're not really honest fabrics. I'm more interested in honest fabrics and fabrics which have an integrity, otherwise it’s just plastic being pushed onto fabric and then melted in the heat. But yes, small-scale might be the future with an emphasis on valuing the fibres, especially in an age where climate change is already impacting the linen industry. I think a change in attitude will be down to a financial aspect as well as an ethical one.
