Alice Blank settled back in her chair at Café Kubal and stared intently at the final product of her capstone project, a comic rendition of the first chapter of “The Castle of Otranto.”

She has brought the 18th century gothic novel to life. The pages are filled with intricate lines, creating detailed scenes.

One page depicts a run-down castle and a multitude of stalagmites and stalactites. Blank gazed unblinkingly down at what she had made.

“Oh yeah, that one took me a while, a long while,” the Syracuse University senior art and English and textual studies major said.

Courtesy of Alice Blank

Blank was recently named as a Syracuse University Scholar, the most prestigious award and undergraduate student can be granted. “The selection of University Scholars is based on students’ academic achievements, creative work, co-curricular activities, and contributions to the community,” according to the College of Arts and Sciences website.

Blank’s achievements range from academic to social. She has received scholarships, has the highest GPA in the English department and wrote the best undergraduate art history paper. She was the editor-in-chief of OutCrowd magazine, has had her works published in Harmonious Hearts anthology, served as the president of WHAT Theatre and was the keynote speaker at the Rainbow Banquet, an event put on by the SU LGBT Resource Center.

While the comic took months and months to complete, Alice never saw it as tedious or as work; she finds relaxation in drawing comics.

In fact, she said she was mainly scared of not finishing the project because without her comic book, she wouldn’t have a physical representation of the time she spent at Syracuse.

Olivia Monko, Blank’s girlfriend of five months and a junior studying television, radio and film at SU, said the two of them got together around the time Blank began working on the project. She was enamored with watching Blank create it.

“It’s been really interesting for me to see the process. She is so talented, so intelligent and so humble,” Monko said. “She would just sit and draw for hours and hours and hours.”

But just five months ago, Blank wasn’t doing her capstone as a comic. She was 35 pages deep into a 60-page paper on 18th century gothic literature, and hating it.

It’s not that Blank doesn’t love English — she does. In fact, she came to SU as a biochemistry major and quickly realized that studying English was what she wanted to do with her life.

“I don’t separate art and writing. I do comics because that is the accepted way to combine these things, but it’s just natural for me,” Blank said. “When I write I want there to be pictures. I really enjoy creation, more so I really enjoy consuming creating.”

Jacob Greenfeld | Staff Photographer

In order to truly combine her passions and make her project less unbearable, Blank went to her adviser, Erin Mackie, at the end of the fall semester and proposed a new project. She would still use the paper and the research she had done thus far, but she would focus the rest of her time through the end of the school year on the comic.

Blank remembers telling her friend about the proposed idea, and thinking about how if her proposal was rejected, she would feel that SU, while being a fine fit, was not the best fit.

“But they let me do it, without even much of a fight. And now I am really happy with Syracuse,” Blank said.

Mackie said that she was thrilled to go to Blank’s final presentation and was proud that she was able to compare the novel and her illustrations on a highly intellectual level and really explained how they reinforced one another. She is currently working with Blank to help get the project published.

Courtesy of Alice Blank

Blank feels lucky that Syracuse has given her so many opportunities to pursue what she loves, perhaps why she herself has given a lot of her time to the community.

At the recent Rainbow Banquet, held at the SU Sheraton Hotel and Conference Center on April 21, she was introduced as a genuine and gentle person, an appropriate segue to her speech regarding coming out at SU and finding community here.

But Blank doesn’t like the idea of having too much attention focused on her, or being seen as a spokesperson for the LGBTQ community.

“I am uncomfortable with myself taking up a lot of space, I don’t seek out chances to speak on behalf of a larger community, it just happens and is just necessary at this point,” Blank said.

Mackie is excited to see what Blank will do after she graduates, as she thinks some of Blank’s work was sometimes stifled by being over-committed and involved. She said that Blank is able to process information and formulate high-level arguments that aren’t often seen in undergraduate students. She believes the world has yet to see what Blank is capable of when she really commits to a project.

And while Blank doesn’t know where she’ll be in the next few years, be it graduate school at Syracuse or an MFA program elsewhere, she knows she desires to continue to commit herself to English and drawing comics.

“When I am laying on my death bed I want to look back and say ‘I made something,’ even if I don’t become super famous, I want to have left something behind,” Blank said. “I am just glad Syracuse University really gave me the opportunity to begin that.”

Published on May 11, 2016 at 8:00 pm

Contact: ararcham@syr.edu