Now, for something I do understand: comics are a $1.6 billion dollar business, with graphic novels being the only sector of the publishing industry to show significant growth over the last decade. Business is booming, and shows no signs of backing down. It seems, then, that these toon-loving geeks may indeed be inheriting the earth.
So here's a riddle: what do you get when you combine yourself, a snowman and a robot in a cartoon? Well, if you collect it together with a respectable portfolio and send it to James Sturm and Michelle Ollie (P.O. Box 125, White River Junction), you may get an acceptance to the Center for Cartoon Studies, a two-year cartooning college that makes its home just down the river from Hanover. Okay, crappy riddle, but the point is, even the application process is cool. The application packet explains that your comic strip "can combine characters" if need be.
The story of the Center for Cartoon Studies, or CCS, is a short one. The college was co-founded in 2004 by James Sturm and Michelle Ollie and will be graduating its first class on May 19. Sturm was living with in-laws in Hartford and working on a follow-up to his critically acclaimed graphic novel, "The Golem's Mighty Swing," when the makings of another story began to fall into place: his longstanding dream of starting a cartoon college. Sturm was no stranger to the academic world, having taught sequential art (ahem) at the Savannah School of Art and Design.
He set his sights on nearby White River Junction as a site for the school, and teamed up with Michelle Ollie, a veteran of the publishing industry and a director at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Together, Ollie and Sturm founded the Center for Cartoon Studies in 2004, offering a two-year degree in cartooning to a class of 20 artists with a variety of backgrounds. Ollie affectionately refers to the bureaucracy around the school as "one layer," referencing an administration that currently consists solely of herself and Sturm.
"I usually joke that if I need to call human resources, I pick up my phone, leave myself a message," Ollie said.
In designing a cartooning college, Sturm and Ollie decided to place emphasis on professional practice and exposure. Around 14 artists visit each term to lecture and critique with students for this reason. Each senior is also required to produce a thesis, most often a graphic novel, and several graduating students are exploring publication for their thesis work.
To those in the know, the permanent and visiting faculty is already starting to read like a who's who of the cartooning industry. Sturm himself brought a slew of credentials to the school. He is co-founder of the Seattle weekly "The Stranger," founder of the National Association of Comics Arts Editors, and his graphic novel "The Golem's Mighty Swing" was Time's "Graphic Novel of the Year" in 2001. Most of the faculty around the Center for Cartoon Studies tend to match Sturm's level of notoriety. This week's visitor, for example, was Ivan Brunetti, a notorious figure both inside and out of the cartooning world.
Michelle Ollie agreed to meet me last Tuesday in the school's graphic novel library, the Schultz Library, housed inside a converted fire station by the White River. A single room, the library has high ceilings and restored wood floors indicative of today's brand of renovated, post-industrial digs.
The bookshelves seem to be tumbling over each other in an effort to contain all of the volumes that have been donated.
"The industry support has been wonderful," Ollie noted. "We hoped that would happen when we put together a business plan, but the good will and interest has been wonderful."
An overwhelmingly positive response from the public seems to have been as easy to gather as its library full of cartoon anthologies and graphic novels. CCS has attracted a smattering of national press, including being named one of The Boston Globe's "Best of the New: Ideas" for 2006. Locally, CCS has been heralded as one of the welcome newcomers to White River Junction, a village eager to recast itself as a cultural center of the Upper Valley.
Several years ago, there was an influx of artists in the formerly down-and-out village of White River Junction who set out to recast the village as a "booming art colony." No one can be quite sure where this renewal movement came from. My personal theory is that people think using the phrase "used to be" makes them sound more exciting (see: "this apartment used to be a warehouse, isn't that neat?!"). Regardless, the change was certainly welcome. In came the Tip Top Cafe, Revolutions Vintage and the Northern State Theater, to name a few.
The artists have been diligently cleaning up house around White River Junction by, well, cleaning up house; otherwise known as renovating old buildings and attracting investment into the area.
To the outsider, White River looks far smaller and emptier than the beatnik Metropolis that its patrons seem to see. But the pride that our heroes see in their work to clean up White River is evident. Ollie took me from the library (library that used to be a fire station) to the rest of the CCS "campus" (cartoon college that used to be a Kolodny's department store) she explained that the center, which pumped around $1 million into the local economy last year, is proud of its role in revitalizing the town.
"When fifty people are walking down Main Street all day, it's a visible change. And economically, it's a blessing," she said.
The campus itself is intimate, and consists of a classroom, several offices, and an open basement studio.
When class is in session, the front hall/gallery serves a triple function as a bike rack, and the ping pong table is generally considered the "heart and soul" of the institution. Students glance up from their comic strips to wave hello, and though I don't understand what drives them to cartoon, they certainly did seem at home in their Fortress of Solitude.
So what's next for CCS and our little town of White River? Hard to tell. The success of the artist's community will depend on whether or not the town can hold the attention (and generous patronage) of the Upper Valley in the long run. Stay tuned to find out what happens, same Bat-Time, same Bat-Channel.
