Featured image: The Mighty Oak, Katie Babic, 2023, mixed media, 30 x 28 in. / 76.2 x 71.12 cm.
Katie Babic’s recent works The Embrace (2025), The Beacon (2025), and The Clover (2023) extend her ongoing exploration of nature’s internal architecture through exquisitely detailed relief prints and mixed-media impressions.
Katie Babic creates detailed prints from tree cross-sections, transforming natural forms into visual narratives of memory, ecology, and time.
By transforming centuries-old tree cross-sections into powerful visual narratives, Babic positions each piece as both artifact and portrait: a record of endurance, memory, and ecological interconnection. Her meticulous technique reveals the hidden geometries of woodgrain while honoring the histories embedded within each trunk.
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The Embrace, Katie Babic, 2025, paper and relief ink, 32 x 31 in. / 81.28 x 78.74 cm.
The Embrace presents a hollowed Basswood cross-section whose curled forms resemble two arms folding inward. Babic’s relief printing captures an astonishing density of fine lines, age rings, bark textures, and growth fractures, evoking both fragility and refuge. The negative space at the center forms a protective void, suggesting sanctuary, gestation, and the quiet ecosystems these trees harbor. By framing the Basswood as a cradle for biodiversity, Babic elevates its natural architecture into a symbol of welcome and interdependence.
The Beacon, Katie Babic, 2025, paper and relief ink, 17 x 19 in. / 43.18 x 48.26 cm.
In The Beacon, Babic renders a Walnut cross-section with striking radial precision. The dramatic split running through the form becomes a visual axis, hinting at history, change, and the narrative of a generational landmark. The tree’s rings radiate outward like ripples or rays, reinforcing the piece’s theme of guidance and return. Rooted in the memory of a Vermont driveway, the image transforms the Walnut into a familial compass, a marker of homecoming and belonging etched into wood.
The Clover, Katie Babic, 2023, mixed media, 40 x 32 in. / 101.6 x 81.28 cm.
With The Clover, Babic interprets the cross-section of a 350-year-old Maple. Its irregular, petal-like edges and complex internal fractures convey centuries of growth, strain, and survival. The surface is alive with delicate, threadlike grain patterns, capturing the Maple’s resilience and long natural history. Babic’s mixed-media approach enriches the organic texture, creating a print that feels simultaneously geological and botanical. The result is an eloquent homage to longevity and the quiet stories held within ancient wood.
Across these three works, Katie Babic transforms tree cross-sections into meditations on time, memory, and ecological life. Each print is both scientific and poetic, part specimen, part emotional landscape. By foregrounding the unique identities of Basswood, Walnut, and Maple, Babic invites viewers to consider trees not as static forms but as archives of lived experience, shaping and shaped by the world around them. Together, the pieces echo a central truth: nature keeps its own record, and every ring is a testament.
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