The Art of Papermaking With May Babcock - Inside Art With Michael Rose

The Art of Papermaking With May Babcock - Inside Art With Michael Rose

 

Artisans have been making and using paper for about 2,000 years. It is a substrate for some and a centerpiece for others. Local maker May Babcock is renowned for her skills as an artist whose work is intertwined with the craft of fine papermaking. From her studio in Pawtucket, she creates paper-based artworks that are exhibited around the world.

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Babcock earned her BFA summa cum laude from the University of Connecticut and her MFA from Louisiana State University. Originally, her focus was on printmaking but gradually her love for paper took center stage. In her skylit studio at Lorraine Mills on Mineral Spring Avenue, Babcock has a collection of works in progress that all draw inspiration and materials from the world around her. She looks at plants and seaweed as the basis for her paper-based artworks. Laborious to create, they offer subtle color sensibilities and a keen sensitivity to the environment that produced them.

 

 

Speaking of her passion for creating paper with found plant matter, Babcock says, “Transforming foraged materials into paper is my own search for belonging and connection with place. I love the experience of handling plant fibers through the hand papermaking process—seeing what kind of paper it makes, responding to local materials, and creating works that give voice to waterways and lands.”

 

Teaching is a major part of Babcock’s practice. She has run the popular website Paperslurry.com for over a decade. Through it, she shares resources and teaches courses. She has also served as a teacher and critic for students at Brown, MassArt, RISD, and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Additionally, she has taught at Worcester Art Museum and storied craft venues like the Penland School and Snow Farm. Her expertise is sought after and she has brought her excitement for her craft into the classroom, expanding the discipline in the process.

 

 

The goal behind much of Babcock’s own artwork is also educational. She wants to help viewers get to know their environment more deeply, in the way the artist herself has. Of what she hopes viewers experience when encountering her work, Babcock says, “The dominant culture has a fractured view that nature is separate from humans. I hope that my work restores this relationship between people and living systems, by evoking local plants, seaweeds, waterways, and histories of a place. People only grow to care for something when they get to know it better.”

 

In her art, viewers can see plant forms they might recognize and others that are novel. Fragile strands of actual seaweed appear in some works, while a novel photographic process that Babcock is developing with her colleague Lindsey Beal allows for the suggestive shadows of plant shapes to show up in others. A series of gentle “pulp paintings” constructed by manipulating fibers with a hose suggest that palette of Monet.

 

 

Babcock has created a name for herself as one of the leading paper artists today. Her work has been exhibited around the globe at shows in Denmark, Spain, Scotland, Taiwan, Israel, Canada, and Portugal. Locally, recent exhibitions have seen her skill highlighted at Brown’s Granoff Center, the New Bedford Whaling Museum, the Fitchburg Art Museum, the Society of Arts and Crafts in Boston, as well as at TF Green Airport and in the Rhode Island Statehouse. Her work is in numerous collections including those of the RISD Museum and the historic Boston Athenaeum, where she will be the subject of an exhibition later this spring.

 

In addition to making and exhibiting her own work, Babcock has also brought attention to the field more widely. She has served on the boards of North American Hand Papermakers and of Hand Papermaking Magazine, for which she recently guest edited an issue that highlighted fellow national and international paper artists.

 

Asked about what it means to her to be working in Rhode Island, and to have a studio at Lorraine Mills, Babcock answers, “Paper pulp can become anything that you can dream up, and as a relatively new art medium it feels freeing and untied from the historical weight that other mediums like painting have. Rhode Island itself has lots of coastline and therefore seaweed (yay!), and I feel lucky to have access to such a beautiful studio space.”

 

 

May Babcock is an artist and craftsperson with enviable skills at transforming natural materials into works of art. Her passion for the field of papermaking in the context of contemporary art is infectious and a visit to her studio would make any guest want to try their hand at the practice. An artist making her work in Rhode Island, her impact echoes far beyond the Ocean State.

 

Learn more about May Babcock at her website www.maybabcock.com, or via www.paperslurry.com.