Artist Talk: Everyday Alchemy
Paper Making With Waste Materials
With Sarah Grace Dye
An Online Talk on Tuesday 9th September 2025, 4-6pm BST
Join live or watch the recording.
Sarah Grace Dye is a visual artist who loves to work with the ephemera of the everyday, avidly collecting paper, textiles and objects that begin a storytelling journey. Through paper making, natural dye and ink making, drawing, cyanotype, stitch and origami she creates small but perfectly formed keepsakes that celebrate the materials they originate from and are to be explored, treasured and shared.
Making paper from waste materials that originate in the kitchen or garden has become a central part of her practice and in turn developed an interest in natural colour and dye making. Sarah says, “The joy of watching magic unfold in front of my eyes keeps me coming back for more and makes me want to keep experimenting and pushing materials as far as possible. I need to see with my own eyes what happens when two things are combined and if someone tells me ‘its not possible’ I usually think, we will see about that!”
The work I make using these papers will often contain another organic substance or object. I am always collecting things I find on walks. Maybe driftwood by the river, a fallen branch covered in lichen or possibly some seed heads or feathers. These things sit around my work space until that moment when a connection is made and an idea begins to germinate.
Since finding herself stuck in Frankfurt, Germany, at the beginning of the covid pandemic her practice has evolved to almost exclusively using the materials all around, especially the things we discard everyday. This recycling practice has become the heart of her work for many reasons. Working from a ‘studio’ that consists of a space on top of the washing machine, has brought about restraints that have shaped her work and helped develop new practices and ideas. Now she also has a garden and shed to enable more experimentation with plants both for paper making and ink and dye experiments.
Join her as she unfolds the many layers of her practice sharing work and the stories and discoveries that accompany each piece.
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Sarah Grace Dye
Sarah Grace Dye is a visual artist who loves to find a use for and beauty in the ephemera of the everyday. Working with these objects has become like an alchemic practice enabling a transformation to take place. She believes learning to use the materials that surround us is important and her ethos dictates that it is important to waste nothing, that everything has a purpose and unique attributes to be examined, explored, elevated and a new purpose discovered. In essence, to search out beauty and hope in everything. The resulting alchemic objects are to be celebrated, shared and treasured.
Sarah is a collector and uses papermaking, natural dye and ink making, drawing, cyanotype, stitch and origami to create work, often within book structures, that amalgamates these together to produce small and perfectly formed keepsakes that echo the essence of the materials and story they communicate.
Sarah is a firm believer that everyone has the capacity to be creative and she is keen, wherever possible, to provide the catalyst for that to be realised. Her belief in the freedom to play and discover ones own marks is central and she is constantly developing this area within her own practice.