A comics page by Joe Lambert

Joe Lambert is a student at the Center for Cartoon Studies. I’ve been following Joe’s blog for a while, partly because he’s a great cartoonist, partly because he does such a great job of documenting his life as a student at the school. (I’ve found student blogs to be a fabulous resource for determining whether a program would be right for me. Dig also, Dan Saffer’s blog about his time at Carnegie Mellon’s Design school)

Joe recently did a long interview with CCS faculty member Steve Bissette. I was impressed by Joe’s knowledge, but also by his honesty:

“I love so many things about comics, but at the same time I get really tired of reading something that I don’t like and getting this nagging feeling in the back of my head telling me that I should like it because it is done well. I think this is part of the complacency we sometimes fall into when creating things: thinking that it’s okay to be passive about what we’re doing or what we’re reading. I don’t want to get into value judgments, because everything is great all of the time, right? But I get tired of liking things just because they’re not bad. I really want to hate everything that isn’t amazing. I don’t think too many comics are doing everything that comics can be doing. “

I also really dig Joe’s list of cartoonists he’s looking to for inspiration these days:

Lately I’ve been looking closely at guys like David B. and Lewis Trondheim. Both create pages that are visually appealing, often with consideration to the way a page reads – the flow, I guess. But they’re both great at symbolizing ideas and doing so in a way that doesn’t interrupt the reading….I like the way Craig Thompson effortlessly guides my eyes across pages. I like the way Chester Brown’s thin, delicate line makes me uncomfortable; or the way Chris Ware evokes the passage of time and establishes rhythm using any number of panels; the way Lilli Carre packs so much into her characters’ expressions; I’m excited by Jordan Crane’s audacity to leap from moment to moment without holding the reader’s hand too tightly. Kevin Huizenga takes his comics very seriously, but still is still playful too.

Yes, yes, yes. Go say hello to Joe.

Very glad to see that Tara Wray put up a teaser trailer for “Cartoon College,” her forthcoming documentary about the Center for Cartoon Studies, at the Cartoon College Myspace page.

The drawing skills don’t matter. It’s can you get down on paper what’s in your head? And if you can in such a way that when I read it you’re opening up a new eye to the world for me or a new ear to the how people talk, or what have you…then it’s cookin’. It’s comics. And that’s all that matters.”

- Steve Bissette, from the really great little trailer for Tara Wray’s documentary, “Cartoon College”

Hooray! The State of Vermont Board of Education just approved The Center for Cartoon Studies for degree-granting authority. It will now be offering a two-year MFA.

“This is a landmark decision from the State,” says CCS board member and Chair of the Board of Trustees of the Vermont Arts Council, Peggy Kannenstine. “What NYU’s Film School is for film or Iowa’s Writing Workshop is for writing, The Center for Cartoon Studies is for comics. Beyond its educational impact, CCS is a fine example of the creative economy at work: helping revitalize a depressed downtown with the economic lift from students, faculty, and tourism. Its contributions to the State and Industry are impressive and quantifiable. It’s appropriate and important to recognize CCS’s quality and the high level of instruction with the terminal degree and certificates.”

James Sturm and the gang at CCS have been working on this for a while, and it’s really great news for the program, which, from everything I’ve read, seems like a really incredible place. (Read Patrick McDonnell’s speech to the 2007 graduating class, and check out Joe Lambert’s blog, and the I Know Joe Kimpel! blog for examples of student work. Also, a documentary called “Cartoon College” is coming out soon, chronicling a year in the life of CCS…)

The next step, of course, will be funding. There are all kinds of arguments about MFA programs, whether they’re good for writing or not, blah blah blah, but in the end, I believe that an MFA program is, or should be, nothing more than time to hone your craft, free from financial responsibilities. The best MFA programs in creative writing offer full tuition, a hefty stipend, and health insurance. (My buddy Brandon has a package like this at the University of Washington.) At this point, CCS is $15,000/year just for tuition.

I’m really not trying to de-value anyone who is paying for an MFA, or any kind of creative education, but the bottom line is, an MFA lets you teach at a university IF you get lucky enough to publish one or two successful books. With all the racket going on with student loans and student debt these days, I think it’s important for an artist plotting the path of his or her creative life be smart about finances. Going $30,000 into debt for an MFA from “cartoon college” is just not a move that I could justify for Meg and me.

I mean, why not just move to Chicago and stalk Chris Ware and the gang?

I’m kidding.

Tonight is a night were the money-grubbing pragmatist in me has clubbed the dreamy artist over the head. It probably has something to do with the job search.

Regardless, this is a step in the right direction, and I’m really happy for CCS and all involved. Now let’s wait and see if somebody drops a multi-million dollar endowment on them!

“Drawing is easier to teach than critical thinking. Don’t get me wrong, rendering well is a tremendous asset for a cartoonist. Still, I think it is often over emphasized. In fact, many of the great cartoonists sublimate their drawing skills and instead favor a style that relies more heavily on graphic design. They distill images until they function more as language or picture-writing.”— James Sturm, journal for Slate.com about running the Center for Cartoon Studies

Here’s what I want: I want a graduate program (MFA, MA, PhD, whatever) that combines a great books program, a creative writing MFA program, a studio art MFA program, a graphic design program, and an information design program, all rolled into one. It’s contents will look something like this:

design courses:

• information design (including diagramming, cartography, infographics)
• typography
• graphic design
• book design, publishing

art courses:

• figure drawing
• color theory
• printmaking (including woodcut and screenprinting)

writing courses:

• fiction/non-fiction/graphic novel workshops

reading list:

• Shakespeare, Dickens, Bible
• Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Gogol, Babel
• Flannery O’Connor, Faulkner, Barry Hannah
• Vonnegut and Elmore Leonard (in cheap paperback)
• Edward Tufte, all books
• comics, comics, and more comics

software training:

• QuarkXPress, Illustrator, Flash

If anyone out there knows of such a place, contact me immediately.

Until then, I’ll be tearing my hair out, scouring Google, studying for the GRE, and trying to fit what it is that I want to do into some kind of disciplinary track of study.

If you want to study pictures, there are places for that. If you want to study words, there are places for that, too. If you want to study pictures and words and what happens when you put them together? Good luck.

The Center For Cartoon Studies is having a scholarship competition. All you do is fill out the application and draw a “two page comic story starring yourself, a snowman, a robot, and a piece of fruit.”

I’ve been admiring the center for quite a while, but I’ve never considered it as a possibility, since they don’t have much funding and lack accreditation. (It’d be so great if they offered an MFA.) But what an incredible thing: to cartoon for a year with teachers like James Kochalka, and a slew of top-notch visiting artists. (Kevin Huizenga designed their brochure, and Alison Bechdel drew her visit.)

It’s really tempting…check out their summer programs.

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Speaking of Alison Bechdel, a little birdie told me that she’s going to appear at the Cleveland Joseph-Beth in October. She was just signed, so there’s no confirmation of it …yet.

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Also: as another great experiment in shameless self-promotion, I’ve started a Myspace account. If you read this and you’re on Myspace too, what the hell, let’s be friends.

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It was really hot this weekend, so we spent a lot of time at the movies. We saw the new Woody Allen with a 5 p.m. matinee/geriatric crowd, which was perfect, since the movie contains jokes about metamucil. The old lady sitting next to me had a husband who was hard of hearing, so after every joke she repeated the punchline for him.

While watching, it occured to me that I work on very small canvases: either an 8 x 11.5 inch sketchbook, or a 15 inch monitor. And the final form of my work, whether it’s a book, or zeros and ones on a computer monitor, is kind of intimate: it’s like something just you and I share. I draw it mostly in solitude, and you read it in solitude…

Film, on the other hand, is such a huge production, a collaboration between so many people, and I think it’s really only done justice by seeing it with other people, in a dark, cool theater, with the characters larger than life….

Okay, that is all for today. I wish you nothing but air-conditioning.