by Claire B. Dunn
ESF class project keeps artist supplied with material An artist in North Carolina who specializes in the traditional design technique of paper marbling has been able to continue her work, thanks to a group of ESF students who made paper for her as a class project. “This ESF batch of paper is tiding me over,” said Mimi Schleicher. “It’s keeping me producing right now.” The pile of paper that arrived this past spring in Schleicher’s Weaverville, N. C., studio was the result of a chance meeting between the artist and ESF Associate Professor Emeritus William Holtzman, followed by the efforts of students in the college’s papermaking course. And it illustrates ESF’s tradition of exposing students to practical experience and real-life problem-solving. “It’s amazing that I met Bill Holtzman,” Schleicher said. “And the fact that anybody offered to do what he did is astonishing in my book.” The process began in 2003 when Holtzman and his wife, Sandy, were vacationing in North Carolina. They attended a craft festival at a museum along the famous Blue Ridge Parkway, where Schleicher had an exhibit. Sandy Holtzman and the artist began chatting, and Sandy Holtzman knew her husband, whose pre-ESF career was in the area of specialty papers, would have an interest in Schleicher’s work. “My wife said to me, ‘You have to meet this woman,’” Holtzman said. “And I said, ‘Yeah, OK, in a minute.’ And she said, ‘No, you have got to meet this woman.’”
14 Inside ESF Fall 2006