Join us for an engaging conversation between artists Lindsey Beal and May Babcock, as they discuss their collaborative artistic practice. Moderated by photography curator Karen Haas, this event will explore the unique process of creating images using plant-based materials and sunlight, illuminating the intersection of nature, art, and sustainability. The talk will explore their use of natural materials — such as pokeberries — in their paper making and photographic processes and how their most recent project, A Living Archive, explores the larger histories of industry within New England.

About the Speakers

May Babcock is an ecocentric artist who transforms sediment, seaweed, and excess plants into handmade paper, revealing the complexities of various waterways. Rooted in hand papermaking and place, her interdisciplinary practice reconnects people to the voice of the land and waters. Babcock exhibits nationally and internationally, installs public art at universities, airports, and historic sites, and has taught at the Rhode Island School of Design and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University. She founded Paperslurry.com, a hand papermaking blog.

Lindsey Beal is a photo-based artist in Providence, Rhode Island, where she teaches at the Rhode Island School of Design. Her work examines historical American views on technology, parenting, and sexual and reproductive health, and how they reflect today’s political and social landscape. Committed to process, she connects her work to early photographic history and techniques, often incorporating sculptural photographs, hand paper making, or artist books into her work.

Karen Haas has been the Lane Curator of Photographs at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston since 2001, where she is responsible for a large collection of photographs by American modernists, Charles Sheeler, Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, and Imogen Cunningham. The Lane Collection, which has recently been given to the Museum, numbers more than 6,000 prints and ranges across the entire history of western photography from William Henry Fox Talbot to the Starn twins. Before coming to the MFA, she received her MA from Boston University and held various curatorial positions in museums and private collections, including the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, the BU Art Gallery, and the Addison Gallery of American Art in Andover. Her recent activities include exhibitions, Gordon Parks: Back to Fort Scott; Edward Weston: Leaves of Grass; and Bruce Davidson: East 100th Street; and publications, An Enduring Vision: Photographs from the Lane Collection; MFA Highlights: Photography; Ansel Adams; and The Photography of Charles Sheeler: American Modernist.