Now that the latest class of students from The Center for Cartoon Studies has graduated, the school’s Thesis Exhibition is now on view, featuring original work by the class of 2014. The exhibition will run through June 22nd at the CCS Gallery Gallery, 94 South Main Street in White River Junction. You can visit on Monday through Friday from 10am to 4pm.
This is pretty neat. This past weekend, White River Junction was home to the White River Junction Film Festival (which we seem to have missed completely). Part of the weekend was a 48 hour film challenge. This year’s winners are Jesse DuRona and Randall Drew, graduates of the Center for Cartoon Studies, with their film Life Drawing.
We talked recently about the Center for Cartoon Studies and their summer programs. For the sixth year, the school is donating a full scholarship to the Vermont Department of Libraries for a Vermont teenager to use to attend the Create Comics summer workshop. Applications for interested parties are due May 2.
Create Comics is a ‘boot camp’ for cartoonists. The 5-day workshop packs in the essentials for producing your own comics. Through lectures, exercises, and group projects, students learn about story structure, page composition, pacing, materials and techniques, character design, drawing, environmental drawing, and production. Students collaborate on a comic anthology that they self-publish during the workshop. Create Comics is for both beginner and advanced students age 16 and over.
Any Vermont student age 16 or older is eligible. This year the workshop will take place in White River Junction, Vermont, July 7-11, 2014. This full scholarship, includes the workshop, supplies, light breakfast, full lunch and evening student activities. Vermonters interested in the scholarship should apply through the local school or public library.
For the application form, please visit the Vermont Department of Libraries site.
White River Junction’s Center for Cartoon Studies has announced that artist Kazu Kibuishi will be this year’s commencement speaker for the 2014 graduating class.
The Center for Cartoon Studies is proud to name Kazu Kibuishi as our 2014 Commencement Speaker! Kibuishi is a graphic novelist best known being the creator and editor of the comic anthology Flight and the ongoing bestselling Amulet series for Scholastic. He is also the illustrator of the Harry Potter book covers.
I didn’t realize that he was the artist for the new Harry Potter covers. While I love Mary GrandPré’s originals, Kibuishi’s new covers are also quite spectacular:
Tomorrow, the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction will host their Sunday Cartoon club for kids 9 and older. It’s a great opportunity for kids to learn how to draw. The session will take place from 10:00 am to 11:30am at The Center for Cartoon Studies’ Post Office building. The cost is $25 per session, with another session taking place on May 3rd.
Sign up here.
The Beat has a fantastic post up about how volunteers worked tirelessly to save the Schultz Library in White River Junction by our friend Jen Vaughn:
How to Save a Graphic Novel Library
1-DISOBEY THE LOCAL AUTHORITIES The police asked the cartoonists to evacuate themselves from the Library and they listened…until the police went away at which time a wily Michelle Ollie and James Sturm (respectively president and director of The Center for Cartoon Studies) led students, alum and staff back to the building that houses the Schulz Library. Propane tanks and train cargo cars slammed into the bridge and building as the water shifted. The surging water crested high and threatened the second floor of the building to the point that everyone had to leave. Many of these students couldn’t get back to their homes because of the flooding but luckily, they had friends everywhere!
2-GET ACCOMPLICES Not only did the cartoonists come but thanks to word of mouth and social networking, several ‘townies’ as they are called showed up to help the students load books into cars to drive the short distance from library to storage facility. It’s amazing to hear that guy who always wears the gray shirt at the coffee shop schlepped books around in the wee hours (lookin’ at you, John and Jevan).
Read the entire, fantastic story here.
Via Cartoon Reporter, the Center for Cartoon Studies was in danger of losing the contents of the Schulz Library as floodwaters rose.
Upon hearing dozens of e-mailed and tweeted rumors, CR asked Center For Cartoon Studies Director James Sturm for an update as to possible storm-related damage hitting CCS and particularly its Schulz Library. He responded at approximately 3:30 AM Monday morning.
“Crazy night,” Sturm wrote. “Brave and tough-minded group moving books out of the library until 3 AM as White River continued to rise.”
Those following the weekend’s news closely know that as much as Hurricane Irene seemed to fizzle out of any serious impact on New York City as had been feared, the state of Vermont was hit with torrential rains and resulting flooding, with rivers that may not have crested as of Monday morning. CCS in located in White River Junction. The Center’s Schulz Library is located nearest the river of any school building. A late-night call went out for volunteers to help salvage books before they were potentially water damaged.
Fortunately, it appears as though the library and center have been spared: “Not one book lost.” However, there has been damage reported to the buildings.
Vermont will be home to the 2011 conference for the International Comic Arts Forum, which will be held between September 29th through October 1st, hosted by the Center for Cartoon Studies in White River Junction.
From their website:
Since 1995, ICAF has been dedicated to promoting the scholarly study and appreciation of comic art, including comic strips, comic books, comics albums and graphic novels, magazine and newspaper cartooning, caricature, and comics in electronic media.
This new partnership with the Center for Cartoon Studies – one of the nation’s most highly-respected institutions dedicated to the training of cartoonists, writers, and designers – promises to further the mission of both units in providing a supportive, collegial environment to showcase innovative comics scholarship and comic art for critics, historians, teachers, and comics professionals from around the world. Previous forums have been held at the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, Georgetown University, the Small Press Expo in Maryland, and the Library of Congress.
It looks like a good partnership, and it should be pretty exciting to have an international group of artists decending upon White River Junction. Here’s the schedule:
ICAF 2011 Conference Schedule
Sept. 29 – Oct. 2, 2011
THURSDAY, SEPT. 29
9:00 – 9:15: Welcome to ICAF
9:15 – 10:15: KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Guy Spielmann (Georgetown University), Cross-dressing in Early Modern Europe: Competing (?) Visions through Bande Dessinée and “Official History”
10:15 – 10:30: BREAK
10:30 – 12:00: PANEL 1 – AMERICAN COMIC STRIPS
Sylvia Marques (Michigan State University) – Looking Outside the Panel: Rethinking Early American Comic Strip History, 1880-1920
Lara Saguisag (Rutgers University – Camden) – Fantasies of Childhood: Constructing the Child in Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland
Roy T. Cook (University of Minnesota) – Charles Schulz and Metacomics
12:00 – 1:30: LUNCH BREAK
1:30 – 3:00: COMICS AND PEDAGOGY ROUNDTABLE
Moderated by Qiana Whitted (University of South Carolina)
Frank Bramlett (University of Nebraska)
Jason Lutes (Center for Cartoon Studies)
Mark McKinney (Miami University, Ohio)
James Sturm (Center for Cartoon Studies)
Jen Vaughn (Center for Cartoon Studies)
3:00 – 3:15: BREAK
3:15 – 4:45: PANEL 2 – BUILDING POSTMODERN GEOGRAPHIES
David Allan Duncan (Savannah College of Art and Design) – A New Comics’ Pupil; A Smaller World, A Larger Potential
Brannon Costello (Louisiana State University) – “The Real Thing”: Mass Culture and the (Post)Human in Howard Chaykin’s Time²
Charles Hatfield (California State University at Northridge) and Craig Fischer (Appalachian State University) – From Hell: Local Narrative, Transnational Collaboration
4:45 – 5:30: GUEST SPEAKER: David Beronä (Plymouth State University) – The Art of the Woodcut Novel
5:30 – 6:00: John Lent Scholarship Award
6:00 – 7:30: DINNER BREAK
7:30 – 9:00: PUBLISHERS ROUNDTABLE
Moderated by Casey Brienza (University of Cambridge)
Gina Gagliano (First Second Books)
Ed Chavez (Vertical, Inc.)
FRIDAY, SEPT. 30
9:00 – 10:30: PANEL 3 – EAST ASIA, COMICS, AND CULTURAL CONFLICT
Karl Ian Cheng Chua (Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines) – Adventures to the “Dark Continent” or Encountering the “Yellow Peril”
Peter Sandmark (University of Victoria) – Tibetan Mysticism in the Development of Golden Age Comic Book Superheroes
Kristine Michelle L. Santos (Ateneo de Manila University, Philippines) – The Warping of Japanese Youth Culture through English Fan Scanlations
10:30 – 10:45: BREAK
10:45 – 12:15: PANEL 4 – COMICS AND NATION
Pedro Perez del Solar (University of Texas, El Paso) – Stories of an Invisible War: Comics and the Peruvian “Internal conflict” (1980-2000)
Héctor Fernández L’Hoeste (Georgia State University) – Transnationalism and Hegemony Amid a Very Uneven Modernity: On Arandú, El Principe de la Selva and The Dynamics of The Mexican Comics Industry
Michelle Bumatay (UCLA) – Unpacking the Punch Line and Bridging the Postcolonial Gap: Humor as a Way to Re-Image and Re-Imagine Gabon and France in La Vie de Pahé and Dipoula
12:15 – 1:30: LUNCH BREAK
1:30 – 3:00: PANEL 5 – THE DEVELOPMENT OF COMICS FORM
Jennifer Miyuki Babcock (NYU) – Ancient Egyptian Figured Ostraca
Peter Sattler (Lakeland College) – The Ends of Comics: An Argument about Final Panels
Kate Moody (Center for Cartoon Studies) – The Rise of the Zinester Amid the Death of Print: Modern Comics, New Media, DIY Culture, and the Fetish Object
3:00 – 3:15: BREAK
3:15 – 4:45: Presentation by Czech Comic Historians, Pavel Kořínek and Tomáš Prokůpek
4:45 – 5:00: BREAK
5:00 – 6:00: Artist Presentation – Robert Sikoryak
6:00 – 7:30: DINNER BREAK
7:30 – 9:00: AN EVENING WITH STEVE BISSETTE
Special presentation and discussion with Steve Bissette on “Uncanny Geometries: Junji Ito’s UZUMAKI and Dread Geometries in Comics & Manga”
SATURDAY, OCT. 1
9:00 – 12:00: Artist Presentation – TBA
12:00 – 1:30: LUNCH BREAK
1:30 – 3:00: PANEL 6: REPRESENTING RACE AND CLASS
Corey K. Creekmur (University of Iowa) – Continuity, Color, and Comics: “What If” Superheroes Were Black?
Matthew Domiteaux (University of Texas at Austin) – Class Identity and the Working Self in Manu Larcenet’s Le Combat Ordinaire
Michael Johnson (University of Texas at Austin) – How not to Orientalize the Afghan: Iconicity and Singularity in The Photographer
3:00 – 3:15: BREAK
3:30 – 4:45: PANEL 7: FRENCH-LANGUAGE COMICS: AN EVOLVING FORM
Presented by The American Bande Dessinée Society
Catherine Labio (University of Colorado at Boulder) – Portrait of the Bande Dessinée as Livre d’Artiste
Fabrice Leroy (University of Louisiana at Lafayette) – Painting the Painter: Meta-representation and Magic Realism in Joann Sfar’s Chagall en Russie
Mark McKinney (Miami University) – Pastiche and Satire in Early Bande Dessinée
5:00: The International Comic Arts Forum concludes
There you have it. Looks cool, and it sounds like an excellent way to spend a weekend.
Our friends at the Main Street Museum in White River Junction let us know about a cool thing going on down there on September 2nd:
Short lectures from local font wizards, designers, logophiles (like Molly Howard and Taylor Haynes!) and a few films on the typefaces that we see every day! Come bring an example of your favorite font for our dissection fun.
Are you on Team Serif or Sans Serif?! Live ink will be available to play with as well so wear black!
$10 at the door.
Main Street Museum. Personally, I’m a Courier New fan.
Geek Mountain State 