May Babcock
An artist who gives voice to waterways by turning seaweed, sediment, and plants into paper.
MessageAbout May Babcock
An artist who gives voice to waterways by turning seaweed, sediment, and plants into paper.
Rooted in hand papermaking and place, her interdisciplinary practice reconnects people to the voice of the land and waters, transforming plant fibers, seaweed, sediment, and site materials into expansive installations, organic sculptures, analog photos and prints on paper, and textured pulp paintings.
Her eco-centric artwork intersects the fields of hand papermaking, contemporary craft, book arts, ecological art, gardening, public art, community building, sculpture, installation art, printmaking, and analog photography. The artist exhibits widely, and has been the recipient of numerous artist residencies, grants, and fellowships. Babcock is a Certified Invasive Plant Manager and a Master Gardener.
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Statement
Places are complex, full of botanical life, changing waterways, marginalized histories, built structures, and more, all of which can offer clues to cultures.
Each body of work is inspired by site specific research into land use, ecologies, hydrologies, human histories, and geologies. I explore rivers and watersheds, oceans, mountains, and more. Material engagement is foundational to my practice. Collected displaced plant and seaweed fibers are processed into paper. Foraged sediment, water, and pressed plants are incorporated into wet paper pulp. Drawings gain a psychological impression and witness poignant evidence of human activity. In the studio, technical innovation invigorates my practice, and I combine papermaking, analog photography, printmaking, gilding, and sculptural techniques. My practice is guided by a regenerative philosophy—where material use and actions benefit all systems holistically.
Identity is intrinsically tied to place, and my personal lineage is a story of uprooting and movement across the globe, a background that pushes me to explore places deeply and through the lens of displaced plants—plants that originate from places far away. From China to Taiwan to America through three generations, and tracing ten generations back to Puritan immigrants in New England, witnessing place through displaced plants is a method of multiracial self-discovery and empathetic connection.
This broad range of influences coalesce with plant-based paper pulp that I make and use to draw sculptural forms, realize large scale pulp paintings, bind artists’ books, develop textured sheets for cyanotype and metal leaf, and embed river muds and seaweeds. I create public art, large-scale installations, and community-created works that are both inspired by and crafted with specific sites and peoples.
Collaboration between people, plants, and paper gives opportunities for deep communication and healing in a climate-changed world.