Tip #12 - Papermaking and Making Art Without Limitations

12 pieces of advice that I wish I knew when starting out as a beginner papermaker, with May Babcock, artist and founder of Paperslurry.com 👋.

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Hey it's May,

If you’re an artist, you might consider papermaking as part of your studio processes.

How I found papermaking as an artist

Back in the olden days, I was majoring in painting to get my BFA as an undergraduate. When I first starting to make an artwork, somehow facing a white, primed canvas as my default starting point began to feel limiting. Constricting.

I had finished the painting major requirements, and started being drawn to printmaking like a metal to a magnet. There was something about the act of carving a piece of wood to draw, rolling up ink, and feeding the block through a press to imprint on a thick piece of paper that was both meditative and satisfying. Printmaking, compared to oil painting on canvas, was much more process-heavy. It better engages with the very stuff, the very materials your art was made of. It gave me choice, and the ability to experiment with materials. And, printmaking didn’t have the same heavy weight of art history that painting did.

Hand papermaking took this all a step further, when I was introduced to it halfway through graduate school. I saw papermaking and pulp as an art medium in of itself, with limitless potential for experimentation and possibility. I could choose the very fibers that make up my artwork. I started using linen rags and bagasse (agricultural waste fiber from processing sugar cane) to make paper pulp.

I used that pulp to:

• create 12 foot wide woodcuts printed on pulp painted papers
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• mix in with Mississippi River sediment and make mud paper sculptural books
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• I poured the pulp onto the river’s concrete levees, allowing the paper cast to dry, peeled it up and removed it, and brought the poured paper back into the gallery for display.
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Why pulp

Paper pulp was malleable, responsive, and could take so many forms. I could envision something, and with hand papermaking make it real, whether it was a flat paper made of different colors of pulp, or something sculptural.

It felt freeing, to try things that logically wouldn’t make any sense at first glance. Who knew you could pulp old rags and use the wet fibers to capture river sediment? That the pulp could be formed into flat sheets, bonded while wet, and allowed to dry into a sturdy sculpture?

Maybe papermaking isn’t for everyone—but if this sense of making art without limitations appeals to you, then maybe papermaking IS for you.

May

PS. If you're not sure why you're getting this email or how you got on the Paperslurry email list, read this. Also here's the last pieces of advice if you missed it.​

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May Babcock
Founder at paperslurry.com​
Artist at maybabcock.com​
Self-proclaimed paper geek