An Actual School For Cartoonists? YES!

By Sara Nelson

White River Junction is looking a little different these days.

Interspersed with empty storefronts, there are new restaurants and hip clothing boutiques, and there's also a noticeable presence of smart-looking young people in flannel shirts and black plastic glasses.

If you look closely, you will notice that the storefront they're hanging out in front of has a sign in the window: Center for Cartoon Studies. The people outside have come to town to pursue the somewhat crazy dream of drawing comics for a living.

Michelle Ollie and James Sturm are the people responsible for making White River Junction the place to legitimately pursue this dream. Sturm, a former sequential arts professor in Savannah, Georgia, and Ollie, a former graphic design, public relations, and marketing professor at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, founded CCS in 2004 after noticing that there were not enough high-quality cartooning programs to meet the demand of an increasingly popular art form.

"While I was teaching, I noticed that the quantity of comic work that students were making was mind-boggling, and the quality was there. At the same time, trends in publishing were going toward non-computer driven illustrative work. There was definitely an opportunity," Ollie said.

So when Sturm proposed the idea for an all-cartoon school, Ollie decided to take a chance.

The pair assembled an all-star faculty of some of the most successful cartoonists around to teach students everything they need to know to become professional comic artists. Burlington cartoonist James Kochalka is one of a host of well-known artists teaching a rigorous curriculum that includes drawing techniques, graphic design, self-publishing, character development, storytelling, and history.

Visiting artists including Chris Ware and Art Spiegelman have stopped by to give lectures and demonstrations.

Next up is Doonsebury creator Gary Trudeau, will give a rare (and sold out) appearance and lecture as a fundraiser for the school next Monday.

The school began with a set of summer classes and a two-year certificate program that earlier this year was upgraded to a full-fledged master's degree. At 20 students per class, students learn the trade in a very intimate setting. There is one main classroom in the old storefront space and a basement lab/studio. Other buildings around town house a library and studio space for seniors. The buildings have been renovated to be comfortable though not necessarily highly-polished, a look Ollie describes as "high art funk." There are no dorms, although an arrangement with the Hotel Coolidge allows a number of students to live in the hostel wing for a reduced rate.

The intimate, supportive atmosphere and the chance to work with some of the best cartoonists in the country are big attractions to CCS students, who come from all over the U.S. and several foreign countries.

Most students have completed bachelor's degrees, but they span a wide demographic range. "The age range for the freshman class this year is 18 to 60," Ollie noted. There is also a great diversity in drawing styles and preferred subject matter. Students come to CCS to learn to create graphic novels and historical comics, Japanese-style manga comics, monster and superhero cartoons, and genres of their own invention. Funk and Fun

What binds them together is a sense of common purpose, and really fun classes.

Steve Bissette's comic history class on a recent Tuesday afternoon began appropriately with a comics trivia question- "What was the first monster magazine ever published?"- and a prize: a pumpkin Pez dispenser.

Throughout the lecture, students scribbled in notebooks, and most of them weren't taking notes.

"We're encouraged to doodle in class" said student Evan Lichty, from Ontario, who said the characters he tends to draws are, "powerful, with large swords."

Bissette worked as professional comic book artist for 25 years, and his credits include a dinosaur comic called Tyrant, as well as the popular Swamp Thing comics in the 1980s. Bissette's encyclopedic knowledge of and enthusiasm for the medium was in evidence during the three-hour, slide-intensive class, which that day centered on 1940s horror comics.

A native Vermonter, Bissette said he "retired" from comics "after the '90s industry implosion." A few years later, when Sturm approached him about teaching at CCS, it was perfect timing, since "I probably wouldn't have been able to say yes if I was still drawing professionally."

"I'll never forget walking around White River with James pointing to different buildings and saying 'this could be a classroom.' I was really excited about that."

Bissette said he wanted to "pass on what I know" to a younger generation of artists. He said that although a lot of the work of cartooning is solitary, there is a huge benefit to students attending a school with like-minded peers and professional support.

"A lot of the work is sitting individually and drawing, but there is a social aspect that people are hungry for, and it's a hard thing to find in this world," Bissette said.

The direct exposure CCS students get to professional artists is also invaluable, he said.

"We sometimes have one or two visiting artists per week here. At this level, it's easy for students to get blasé about it, but it's really special. There's an enormous amount of knowledge passed on here."

Senior Bryan Stone agreed that this level of attention and access was a big factor in his decision to move with his wife from Alabama to Vermont to attend CCS.

"It's very concentrated. All the faculty are working cartoonists, people who we've been fans of," he said.

Working with Heroes

Stone is also happy with the school's thesis program, in which seniors choose a professional cartoonist to serve as their advisor. It's "pretty much a surreal experience- almost everyone got to work with the person they wanted to. We're basically working with our heroes." The greater artistic freedom of cartooning, as opposed to other disciplines like graphic design, is another reason students choose this path.

"Drawing comics, you can do anything you want. You're the actor, director, scriptwriter," said Lichty.

Blair Sterret, a student from Ogden, Utah, dropped out of animation school to come to CCS. "I realized I didn't want to be a little name at the end of the credits who worked in the basement on some straight-to-video Disney movie," Sterret explained.

"It seemed like I could have a greater, better voice with comics than animation."

Sterret has drawn comics since fifth grade, and has had his comic strips published, but said that gaining a basic technical skill set was another reason to come to CCS.

"I didn't really know traditional or easy ways of doing things- things like design, clarity, lettering," he said.

"I knew I could take my work further."

Robin Chapman, a cartoonist who teaches part time and leads a graphic novel reading group at CCS, said that's the goal for all of the school's students.

"We're interested in producing good comics," she said.

In the few years since CCS has been open, its success on this account is evident on several fronts. Students have gone on to internships and jobs with prestigious comics publishers such as Drawn and Quarterly in Montreal and DC Comics. Students have also won awards and grants. For example, Alexis Frederick-Frost, a graduate and part time teacher at CCS, won a Xeric grant for his senior thesis, La Primavera, a comic about a historic bicycle race, to be published as a book.

The school has attracted lots of media attention, and has also drawn a documentary filmmaker to White River Junction.

Tara Wray, a comic fan and the creator of the award-winning film Manhattan, Kansas, is working on a documentary about CCS called "Cartoon College."

"I think a lot of people are interested in comic books and graphic novels- there is a large group of art students, people interested in a do-it-yourself ethic, and people interested in education and the creative economy who will be interested in the Center for Cartoon Studies. The school has tapped into something."

"Cartoon College" is set to be completed in time to be submitted for the 2009 Sundance film festival.

WRJ Revival

The success of the Center for Cartoon Studies and its students is also good news for the community of White River Junction.

"Our economic impact exceeded one million dollars last year. We bring in visitors, and tourism, we're renting hotel rooms and halls, we need catering, we put up exhibitions, and we help out other organizations," Ollie said.

"We look at it as, we're all in this together. If the town doesn't make it, we don't. If we're successful, then the town will have more amenities for our students."

Bissette agreed. "There's the inevitable friction between a weird school in a depressed Vermont town, but most people who come here are really nice people, and the community needs something like this."

"The question is, how do we make White River Junction as much of a destination as Rt. 4 in Quechee. We're trying to be creative about this," Bissette said.

One creative way the school is making inroads into the community and the tourist market is a booth at the Quechee crafts fair that sells student comics.

"It brings a few dollars to student pockets, but more than that, it's building a bridge."

As for the economic prospects for CCS graduates, students and faculty said that the forecast is looking pretty good right now.

Some of the reason for this is the eternal charm of a well-composed cartoon.

"People love comics," Ollie said, "because they offer more layers of communication, a richer experience."

Bissette concurred.

"It's a unique medium. There's an intimacy to it. When I'm reading a comic, my cat comes and sits on my lap to get right between me and it, she know all my attention is focused on it, and she wants that," he said. "Cartoons," he speculated, "plug directly into right and left sides of the brain."

Additionally, students and faculty said that cartooning is undergoing a renaissance right now.

Ollie pointed out that unlike at other times in history, it's culturally acceptable for adults to read comics in the form of graphic novels, and that libraries are adding comic sections that are drawing in young people, and "traditionally non-reading populations."

All of this bodes well for young cartoon school graduates, who may be able to ride the wave of mainstream and underground cartoon popularity.

"I'm not really worried, although I know I should be," said Stone, who is beginning work on his CCS thesis, an 80-page cartoon story about "an elderly lady."

"Opportunities are much more available now- it's not quite as scary even as it was when we first moved up here."

"The ideal would be to graduate, take my thesis somewhere and get it printed, and hopefully make enough money to then work on the next project."

For now, students are busy perfecting their storylines and learning screen printing and binding techniques. And preparing for the upcoming snowy months. There is a helpful mantra around the school:

"Winter in Vermont is drawing season."