HVT X S14 Stories
—March 17, 2022
THE WHOLEHEARTED DESIGNS OF KATIE BABIC
Looking out the window from Katie Babic’s studio, you can see the serpentine slopes of Sugarbush and the top of Mad River Glen just in the distance. It’s winter, and the lines of the white trails stand out against the surrounding forest. “This was all wooded,” recalls Babic, who worked with her husband to design the landscape, carefully harvesting trees to open up the view. If there’s a hands-on project involving natural materials, like making cutting boards from said trees or building stonewalls, Babic says, bring it. “I just have this sense of confidence when I’m working with my hands. I have no idea where it comes from or why.” That creative dexterity, and intuition, along with a deep abiding love for Vermont is what led her to a new career as a full-time artist. From this nestled spot in the valley, Babic uses basic materials— black ink, white paper, and native hardwood—to create unique hand-pulled prints with a graphic and geographic pop.
Babic’s art fuses representations of specific places with the concentric rings inside a tree’s core, showcasing, in the artist’s words, “nature’s hidden beauty.” The technical term for a cross- section of a tree is a “cookie.” At the moment, Babic is working off of two: a thick slab of a 99- year-old ash tree from her Waitsfield property and an equally aged walnut from another Vermont forest. Ever since Babic converted the family dining room into her art studio, the ash and walnut cookies have served as permanent centerpieces, taking up almost the entire length of the lacquered table. They are striking cuts of wood with surfaces saturated to pure black and smooth to the touch. One might think they’re standalone art pieces or one-of-a-kind coffee tables in the making; nevertheless, they fulfill an essential function in Babic’s printing technique.
“This is my baby,” she says, placing both hands on top of the ash. “I have a maple out in the garage that we counted 300 rings on, and I’m just too nervous to burn it.” Blow torching the surface of a cookie is just one step in preparing the wood for printing. Burning away the softer wood leaves the relief of hard lines necessary for that contrast in printing. But the process isn’t done without some risk, and Babic doesn’t take that lightly. She holds a great deal of respect for these old trees. Before the ash and walnut found their way to the family dining room, it was her love for a spruce that set Babic’s art-making into motion. That and the global pandemic.
Like millions of people who had to reevaluate work and life in the early days of the lockdown, Babic found herself working full-time from her bedroom office. As an elementary school counselor, she was doing her best to support students and teachers over zoom while her three children, ages four, ten, and twelve, were home struggling with distance learning and uncertainty. “I just got to this moment where I was like, I don’t know what I’m doing. You know?” Babic left her counseling job, vowing not to take on any commitments for at least a year so she could be 100% present for her family. “I’m someone who follows my heart, and I was just like, no. This is what I’m feeling. I need to honor this. So I left and had no idea what I was gonna do.”
“This is what I’m feeling. I need to honor this. So I left and had no idea what I was gonna do.”
Several months later, in the fall of 2020, the Babics gathered with relatives at the family camp in Chelsea, Vermont, to pay tribute to a close friend who had passed away. Things went awry during the ceremony when a flaming sky lantern became stuck in the very old, very dead spruce tree that stood next to the cabin. Thankfully, the spruce and the house were spared, but it was clear that the tree needed to come down. “My mother-in-law is one of five, and her entire family—kids, nieces, and nephews—were mourning this tree,” remembers Babic. “It was so heartwarming to watch. On our ride home, my husband was like, ‘We need to do something.’”
That’s when Babic had the idea to make a print of the cross-section of the tree. At first, she tried printing the whole stump, but it didn’t look right. With some family members living out of state, she decided to make a stencil in the shape of Vermont and place the tree’s heartwood— the center point at the core of a trunk—at the exact geographic coordinates of Chelsea. The result was spot-on: a meaningful, wholehearted documentation of the beloved spruce. She delivered the artworks to the extended family on Christmas Day, and with a few extra in hand, Babic gifted prints to neighbors. Entrepreneur friends encouraged Babic to sell her work, so she approached local galleries and soon after launched the Katie Babic Designs website and Etsy shop. With new orders came new stencils—Alaska, New York, Texas, Nantucket Island, Cape Cod, the ridgeline of Camel’s Hump. And the placement of the heartwood makes every print acutely customizable. “Whatever landscape brings joy and meaning to you,” says Babic, “that’s it. My whole thing is, surround yourself with things that are meaningful, that makes your heart feel whole.”
It’s no surprise that for Babic that place is Vermont. She was born and raised in Barre and met her husband, David, in high school. After a few years studying out of state to earn her bachelor’s degree in Fine Art and Education and then a master’s in Counseling and Human Development, she returned home, married David, started a family, and pursued her career in education. “I feel so fortunate about being in Vermont—this is our playground,” says Babic, looking out her studio window to the mountains. “This is where we choose to be because we value the landscape that’s around us.”
It’s no surprise that for Babic that place is Vermont. She was born and raised in Barre and met her husband, David, in high school. After a few years studying out of state to earn her bachelor’s degree in Fine Art and Education and then a master’s in Counseling and Human Development, she returned home, married David, started a family, and pursued her career in education. “I feel so fortunate about being in Vermont—this is our playground,” says Babic, looking out her studio window to the mountains. “This is where we choose to be because we value the landscape that’s around us.”
That appreciation for Vermont and belief in her work led to a partnership with Hotel Vermont. Hans van Wees, the hotel’s general manager, credits Babic for reaching out to introduce herself. For three years, the hotel team searched for in-room art created by a local artist. They had hoped to find some type of block print to complement the hotel’s interior style. Many proposals came across van Wees’ desk, but none were quite the right fit. After staying at Hotel Vermont for her wedding anniversary, Babic cold-called van Wees to make her pitch. “Me, with my mindset, I have nothing to lose. I believe in the product with all of my heart.”
Van Wees found Babic’s personal story compelling, and after she’d dropped off some samples made from the ash and walnut, he quickly realized they had found what they had been looking for. “It sort of fell on our lap. . . . We said, wow, this could actually mean that we could have an original piece of art in every one of our rooms.” Van Wees called Babic up the next day and ordered 125 prints, one for every room. With interior designer Kim Deetjan from TruexCullins, the hotel is executing a redesign of the rooms with dark brown accent walls and floating frames to feature the Vermont prints in the best possible light. Ten different heart locations will be represented, including Burlington, Waitsfield, Barre, Woodstock, and Huntington, to name a few. Landscapes of Camel’s Hump, Mount Mansfield, and the view of the Adirondacks will also be on display in the event rooms. It took Babic a full two weeks to complete the prints.
“It’s humbling . . . you’re connecting with nature in a way that you never do otherwise.”
To demonstrate the printing process, she takes out her original hand-cut Vermont stencil and places it on top of the wood. “So I have my ink here,” she says, taking up the roller next to a container of Cranfield, a water-based ink, “and I would ink up the stump, all around the lines.” She points to the large crack in the surface. “Sometimes I’m hiding the crack, sometimes I’m fully exposing it. It’s all a matter of how I’m connecting with [the wood] at that moment.” A piece of archival paper is laid on top and what follows is five minutes of intense pressing by hand. Once that is done, the paper is pulled off, leaving the impression of the tree’s core on paper. “It’s a cathartic process,” she says, “where if you can get into the zone, you lose yourself. It’s humbling . . . you’re connecting with nature in a way that you never do otherwise.”
Like the lines that encircle the heartwood at a tree’s core, Babic believes her artwork has the potential to lead to a deeper understanding about the life of trees. “I think what’s so fascinating is just the connection to the tree.” Babic points to an area of the ash cookie where the rings are noticeably tighter. “Right? Like learning about what was going on this year.” She moves her hands around the stump to where the spaces widen. “This must have been the sunny side of the tree.”
An ash of this size and age is a rare find these days, adding another layer of significance not lost on Babic. “Who knows if in ten, fifteen years we’ll be able to have ash floors or the baseball bats or decoys or whatever because it’s a dying species.” The emerald ash borer, a beetle native to Asia, has wreaked havoc on ash forests across North America for the last twenty years. There is a high probability that the tree species will be wiped out altogether. Using her printing method, Babic wants to create a series of large prints pulled from the cross- sections of ash trees from around Vermont. She envisions an exhibition of stunning panels that can serve as historical documentation, telling the story about individual ash trees—where they were located, how long they lived, and more. Displayed alongside could be images of the emerald ash borer and information on invasive species and how they adversely affect local ecosystems.
When Babic made her first print off the spruce trunk in 2020, it was a way to commemorate and document a very personal piece of her family’s history. Little did she know that the art of pulling would become her full-fledged business. Today, after creating hundreds of personalized prints for people across the country, she sees the potential for the work to be a powerful springboard into bigger conversations around environmental preservation. “We have this opportunity to create stewards who are connected with our world,” says Babic. The mission emerging from Babic’s work comes out of her life experience as a creative person, mother, educator, and Vermonter. She brings her whole self to the work and to the table where the cuts of ash and walnut continue to make their mark. “I want [people] to know, this is more than just a stump,” she says with her hand over the heartwood of the ash, “this is a piece of history.”
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