The mood is upbeat at The Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS), located in the renovated historic Post Office building on South Main Street in White River Junction. As they celebrate their 20th anniversary, faculty and staff also anticipate the culmination of their longtime dream to consolidate the college’s workspaces into just two buildings after the purchase and renovation of a second historic building in downtown WRJ.

After years of leasing spaces in different locations all over the village, CCS President Michelle Ollie says that fundraising for the old Telegraph building at 103 Gates Street is 85 percent complete. CCS plans to move from their various leased spaces in the coming year and anticipates community fundraising support to complete the renovation project. Problems with their current leased workspaces, some of which are below ground, include accessibility issues, flooding, capacity, and lack of natural light. “Now we can manage, design, and build the spaces to fit the program,” says Michelle.

Faculty member and artist/author (Wash Day Diaries and Nubia: Real One) Robyn Smith ’17 and Michelle pause for a hug while passing each other in the foyer. Robyn, a winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Graphic Novel/Comics, shows off a drawing that a student has made of her wearing a holiday sweater for their annual gift drawing exchange. Michelle says she wants to show me hers, which is in her office, and invites me in to follow her through a spacious classroom with wood flooring, high ceilings, and colorful art projects hanging on every wall.

 

 

Creating a Cartoon College

As president of the college, Michelle’s primary job is to work with the staff and faculty, but she says that within the close-knit community she often touches base with students as well. Michelle cofounded the college with celebrated cartoonist James Sturm, who as director of CCS oversees the Applied Cartooning lab. “He’s incredible! I believed we could accomplish a lot together,” Michelle says.

Michelle and James met when she inter-viewed him to head up a comics major at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, where she was a faculty member and director of marketing and publicity. He was teaching comics at the time and had the idea to have a program exclusively focused on comics. “Graphic novels were starting to get a lot of attention,” Michelle says. She loved James’s vision of including design and self-publishing in the curriculum; however, he decided not to take the job at MCAD. A few years passed, and when Michelle was talking to a mutual friend about where she saw her own career going, the friend said to her, “Michelle, I think you need to talk to James.” At this point, James had moved to Vermont, and after contacting him and collaborating on a plan for a cartoon college, Michelle moved to WRJ, which had the perfect artistic vibe for their endeavor.

Michelle and James leased and renovated space in the Colodny building, once a depart-ment store on South Main, and started the school. They held graduation at Briggs Opera House. “My son was born a few weeks before the first graduation,” says Michelle. “I had a little baby with me up on stage.”

As the school grew, “we were all over WRJ, renting space where we could find it, but it’s hard to manage that over time,” says Michelle. In 2013, the college was able, after fundraising and community support, including a reduced sale of the property by founding board member Bayle Drubel, to purchase and renovate the historic Post Office building. With industry support, their famed Schulz Library, which is fully stocked with more than 18,000 graphic novels and comics, many donated by publishers, alumni, and other cartoonists, found its home in the building.

Above the library circulation desk hang the cartoon self-portraits of every librarian who has worked there, and EB Sciales ’22, the librarian on duty, is aware of the gravity of her task to add her own framed likeness to the collection. “I’m not not confident about my work,” she says with a laugh, but acknowledges that the pressure is on. EB, along with her librarian colleagues Natalie Norris ’20 and Violet Kitchen ’23, are “the dream team,” according to Michelle.

 

A Top Choice for Serious Artists

CCS cares deeply about their students’ futures. Professional Practice is a required class where students explore industry topics such as working with agents and understanding contracts, as well as accounting and business, as they develop their art practice. They learn how to present and sell their work to agents and publishers, who visit individual classes and travel to CCS for an industry day to meet with students. “We invite a variety of publishers,” says Michelle, “including for children’s books.”

Classes do sometimes have students who come right out of high school and pursue the option of a one- or two-year certificate instead of the MFA. “Few people fit that model,” says Michelle. “But they find us, and they are incredible.” Michelle cites Tillie Walden ’16, author of Are You Listening? and Spinning and current Vermont Cartoonist Laureate, as one of those younger students. Tillie, who trained as an ice skater, has won both Eisner and Ignatz awards for her work.

Alumni are actively attached to the school in many capacities, including as faculty. Administrative and Development Coordinator Jarad Greene ’17 is the author and illustrator of the middle grade graphic novels A-Okay and Scullion.

Alumni host recruitment events for CCS in cities where they live all over the country. They promote the college on social media platforms and in dedications in their published books. Katherine Roy ’10 (How to Be an Elephant and Making More: How Life Begins), another award-winning alumnus, is the bestselling author and illustrator of children’s books focused on science and natural history.

First-year students at CCS are on campus full time. During the second year, students work on a thesis project of a full graphic novel or comics that may be picked up by an agent or publisher or eventually self-published. For the most part, second-year students are also on campus attending courses and working in the studio, although a few with extraordinary circumstances can work on their thesis project remotely. Michelle discourages a remote semester because the students lose the community connection of being at the school.

 

Workshops and More

In addition to CCS’s 30 to 40 full-time students, at any given time, more than 300 people of all ages are taking cartooning and graphic novel workshops. They are also attending webinars or a cartoon club. CCS provides summer and winter workshops and seminars (from one to six weeks). The CCS website (cartoonstudies.org) offers a free online self-directed Cartooning Workout class to introduce people to the medium. The website also provides links to purchase notable alumni publications online.

Another popular program has been the Saturday Morning Cartoon Club for kids ages 8 to 13. More than 3,500 Upper Valley kids have participated in Cartoon Club since it launched. During July, kids can also attend weekday morning Summer Cartoon Club. Michelle says people come to visit the area from all over the world and enroll their kids in the summer workshops.

The college offers some merit and income-sensitive scholarships and relies on community support for raising funds for their nonprofit institution. Every year for their annual appeal they mail out a special comic zine to their supporters.

 

A Community-Centered School

The community supports CCS, and in turn CCS is a valuable resource for WRJ. In addition to restoring their campus buildings, helping beautify the village, CCS often shares their spaces. They host meetings and events for the Vermont Arts Council, the Town of Hartford, and other nonprofits. They hosted the mural creation project on the COVER wall, allowing the public to engage with the artist, and they donated space for JAG to conduct rehearsals for many years.

“We also do a fair amount of programming with local libraries,” says Michelle. “We get requests from all over the country, but mostly from the Upper Valley, for our faculty and alumni to work with schools and libraries to participate in events, forums, conferences, and zine fairs,” she says, and they donate books to libraries as well.

CCS sponsors at least a dozen zine fairs across the country, where the community of cartoonists and artists showcase their work. Every fall CCS partners with JAM (Junction Arts & Media) to sponsor the TWIST (Twin States Comics and Zine Fair). Many of the artists are CCS alumni who live in the area. “It’s a chance for them to bring their work to the public,” says Michelle. “In addition to comics and zines, they sell stickers, merchandise, original art, and posters; they are celebrating the medium at these types of events.”

CCS often partners with The Norwich Bookstore, Still North Books & Bar in Hanover, and Yankee Bookshop in Woodstock, which all display CCS alumni work. Shopping for graphic novels, cartoon books, and children’s books at these local bookstores is one way for the community to support local artists.

“Several of our alumni have had their book release parties here in the Upper Valley,” says Michelle. “It is fantastic for our community to be able to celebrate these authors who live here and work here. It really is another example of how it’s a community centered school—not just within the walls, but also out in our community.”

CCS also partners with Putnam’s Vineyard in WRJ, providing multiple genres of graphic novels and comics for a comic strip reading pop-up called Strip Club on Sundays in January. These events help increase awareness of the medium, showing how entertaining and educational it can be.

Michelle points out that comics can serve as a tool to encourage and promote literacy in reluctant readers. “The goal is to encourage a lifelong passion for reading. Comics can be a way to do that. And this work is not done,” she says. “There are plenty of opportunities for supporting young readers, and I want comics to reach as many of them as possible.” 

 

The Center for Cartoon Studies

PO Box 125

White River Junction, VT

(802) 295-3319

cartoonstudies.org

 

Michelle Ollie PRESIDENT & CO-FOUNDER

Michelle Ollie is co-founder and president of The Center for Cartoon Studies (CCS). She teaches design and was previously a director and faculty at Minneapolis College of Art and Design and faculty for New York Institute of Technology’s online graduate business program. Michelle has also worked as a development manager in the printing industry and she received her MBA from the University of St. Thomas. She currently serves on several nonprofit boards including the Vermont Higher Education Council.

JAMES STURMDIRECTOR & CO-FOUNDER

James Sturm is the co-founder of The Center for Cartoon Studies and his graphic novels include Off Season, Market Day, and The Golem’s Mighty Swing (Drawn & Quarterly). Working with Andrew Arnold ′07 and Alexis Frederick-Frost ’07, he has co-authored eight books in the Adventures in Cartooning series (First Second Books). James is the recipient of two Eisner Awards including one for his Fantastic Four series, Unstable Molecules (Marvel) and another for Satchel Paige, Striking Out Jim Crow (Hyperion/Disney).