Macroalgae: Moonstone Beach #15 Collage

May Babcock is an interdisciplinary artist based in Providence, Rhode Island. Her studio techniques combine hand papermaking, printmaking, sculpture, historical photography process, and book-arts techniques, creating artwork that addresses place. She gathers sketches, materials, histories, and environmental information from sites to create works of paper, installations, public art, and community-based art. Babcock exhibits nationally and internationally, has taught courses in all forms of printmaking, papermaking, drawing, and two-dimensional design, and has been the recipient a range of grants, fellowships and artist residencies. ARTIST STATEMENT Landscapes are complex, full of botanical life, waterways, historical memory, built environments and more, all of which can offer clues to a culture. I begin with specific sites, where I collect plant fibers, materials, and drawings to gain psychological impressions and witness poignant evidence of human activity. I am a curious artist, who researches and is fascinated by local hydrologies, plant ecologies, geological history, and human-created structures and histories. As a hand papermaker informed by print processes, technical experimentation in the studio invigorates my practice. Adventurous hybrids explore a range of processes, chosen for their aesthetic value and contextual significance. This broad range of influences coalesce with artist-made paper pulp, used to draw sculptural forms, realize large scale pulp paintings, cast carved woodcuts, develop textured sheets for cyanotype, and embed river muds and seaweeds. Very often, I create public art, large-scale installations, and community-created works that are both inspired by and crafted for specific sites and peoples. Visit for more information.