About

I’m May Babcock, a papermaking artist using natural materials in New England. I grew up in rural Connecticut surrounded by forests, rivers and ponds, vegetable and flower gardens. I received scholarships to attend the University of Connecticut for a BFA in painting and printmaking, and went to Louisiana State University for my MFA and to learn papermaking.

As a multiracial artist of Taiwanese-Chinese descent I felt like I never belonged. Exploring specific sites is a search for belonging, plant fibers, and connection with place.

 
 
 

Artist Statement

I’m a papermaking artist who uses foraged natural materials to craft spacious sculptures, pulp paintings, and installations shaped by place. I begin by immersing myself in resonant shorelines, rivers, and forests, where I gather abundant plants, color, and sediment.

As a mixed race artist of Taiwanese-Chinese descent, my work is a search for belonging. I relate to plants and seaweeds arriving from other places. I slow down to listen as plants tell the stories of the entangled ecologies at distressed sites. 

In the studio, I dissolve plant fibers and reconstitute them into paper pulp forms. It is a collaborative process guided by material, water, time, and a spiritual expansion of self, where natural materials become emanations of place. The dominant culture divides humans from nature into a false hierarchy, and my work and hand papermaking process renarrates this dynamic.

My work invites people to slow into deep communication with the land, plants, and waters, giving opportunities for reconnection, calm, and nourishment in a crisis-filled world.

 

So-called “invasive” plants are used as fibers for papermaking.

 
 

Pulping plant fibers by hand, on a rock in the wilderness.

I mix water with fibers to make paper pulp, and pour colored pulps to form a ‘pulp painting’

 

Bio

May Babcock a papermaking artist who uses foraged natural materials to craft textured sculptures and installations. Each paper work explores place, belonging, and local ecologies. Babcock has exhibited nationally and internationally at the Boston Athenaeum (Boston, MA), RISD Museum (Providence, RI), Fitchburg Art Museum (Fitchburg, MA), The Center for Book Arts (New York, NY), Ogden Museum of Southern Art (New Orleans, LA) and National Taiwan Craft Research and Development Institute (Taipei, TW). Forthcoming in 2026 is a site-specific outdoor installation for the Trustees (MA). Her work has been collected by RISD Museum, Boston Athenaeum, and numerous private collections. Babcock has installed public art at Brown University, Illinois State Museum, Rhode Island State House, and T.F. Green International Airport.

Awards include a Creative Community Fellowship from National Arts Strategies, and the Citizen’s Citation for Environmental Education from the mayor of Providence RI. The artist was the keynote speaker for the Rhode Island Environmental Education Association Annual Summit, and spoke at the 2026 Paul J. Cronin Memorial Lecture at deCordova Sculpture Park & Museum. Her work has been featured in the Boston Globe, Art New England, Hand Papermaking, and several publications. She had taught papermaking at Rhode Island School of Design, SMFA at Tufts University, Penland School of Craft, and Women’s Studio Workshop. Babcock has been artist-in-residence at the White Mountain National Forest, Cape Cod National Seashore, and Guadalupe Mountains National Park. She was the guest editor for the “Ecology and Paper” issue of Hand Papermaking magazine, and is a certified invasive plant manager and master gardener. She founded Paperslurry.com, a hand papermaking blog.

 
 
 
 

My Papermaking Process

 
 
 
 

Outside the Studio

I volunteer for a horticultural therapy garden, The Garden at Daggett Farm.

Main hobby: telling my partner how healthy lentils are every time we eat lentils.

My friends have cool publications, check out:

You may also know me as the founder of Paperslurry.com.

Making a paper pulp painting on a beach

 
 
 

Collecting water chestnut pondweed, a fiber source for papermaking.

 

For further reading:

Each series in my portfolio has more you can explore.

Red seaweeds foraged from Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island.