By Michelle Bova (HS'07)

Betsy is no more than five years old. She wears a sour disposition, the anger of a child about to throw a tantrum, or seen another way, perhaps a child with a very empty stomach. Although she may look young and even petulant, the truth is she is the product of a friendship, a collaborative work that, in a sense, was 40 years in the making. Betsy is a piece of collaborative art, a quilted fabric art piece by Leslie Golomb (A'75) and Michelle Browne (A'75).

In 1971, Browne was trying to find a friend, because after only one week at Carnegie Mellon, the freshman's roommate found a boyfriend and was never around. Wandering the halls of Morewood Gardens, she met Golomb, her dorm neighbor. Golomb was from Pittsburgh and an alumna of the precollege program. In short, she knew her way around. "And I," says Browne, "was completely lost."

From Morewood Gardens to their shared classes in the College of Fine Arts, Golomb and Browne became more or less inseparable. During their years at Carnegie Mellon, they shared an apartment, lent each other sketch pencils, made room on drafting desks, critiqued each other's work, paired up for gallery tours, and shared both a love of printmaking as well as a love of their job teaching youngsters at the Children's Institute how to use art to express themselves. What they did not share was their canvases. Golomb and Browne collaborated on a single project: as a joke, they set their pencils to paper simultaneously to work on a piece of art in their spare time. "After 10 minutes, we were enormously frustrated," says Browne.

What nothing could separate at Carnegie Mellon eventually was parted by the turning of their cords on graduation day. Although they both ended up living in Pittsburgh, they each got married, had children, and found jobs. Nevertheless, they did do their best to stay in touch. And, in 2005, when Golomb learned about an opportunity to study printmaking in Italy, she knew who to call. In college, the two friends had talked about traveling to Europe, but they never did. "Neither of us had families that took us much beyond the Jersey Shore," says Browne. "So we had this adventure [more than 30 years later]. It knocked our socks off."

In a tiny Italian villa-where baskets overflowed with picked vegetables, fresh pasta, and artisan cheeses-their creativity was also fed. Ten days later, they returned to Pittsburgh, inspired, and began to work on a series of prints that later led to large fiber works, each of which began as block prints emanating from anonymous photographs of girls. "Betsy in the Forest" at 45"x 68" was the first large pieced and quilted work of the series, exhibited in Fiberart International 2010 at Pittsburgh's Society for Contemporary Craft. The piece was awarded second place.

The artistic journey to Italy wasn't the last time Golomb thought to include Browne in an endeavor. When Golomb was contacted by a Carnegie Mellon Gift Officer, she agreed to a meeting. "I dragged Michelle with me," she says, "and I didn't tell her what it was about."

They didn't need much convincing that the life of an artist isn't always easy, especially financially. And they didn't need to be reminded about the joy they had during their years at Carnegie Mellon, both in classrooms and through their friendships. They decided to fund a student scholarship in both of their names, linking them together forever on the Carnegie Mellon campus.