New Yorker cartoonist Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell and the ‘farm town’ of Sonoma

Little Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell was 8 years old when she attended drawing classes behind the beloved video rental store Movie Merchant to learn from the tutelage of Scott Bromley, a 1998 graduate of Sonoma Valley High School.

Now 31, Campbell sketches cartoons for the big city publication of The New Yorker, but she is still enamored and inspired by her small town upbringing in Sonoma, which continues to fuel her ideas.

That was clear Thursday night at La Prenda Wines, where a number of her old neighbors attended Campbell’s cartooning class to be imparted with her wisdom and knowledge (mostly about “Law & Order” and “Forensic Files,” as she jokes).

“The real reason I’m here is because Ned (Hill) is my neighbor,” Campbell joked in her opening remarks about the owner of La Prenda. “I started drawing labels for Ned maybe five, six years ago, so there's ‘Happy Wife’ and a bunch of other ones. We've done some very raunchy ones over the years.”

One example is a collection of wines called, “Happy Wife,” each depicting a woman with a different hair color. Campbell pointed to the “behind the scenes” discussions about the cartoon’s breasts size — which required enhancements for a “real perky set.”

Exaggeration is one of the keys to making a good comic, Campbell said, combined with observation and pushing the boundaries of reliable tropes.

“When I think of what a cartoon is, in my opinion... it's taking something that's pretty ordinary, or mundane or something that's very much a part of our everyday existence, and then trying to turn it on its head,” Campbell said. “It's taking something that everyone knows... and then saying, ‘How can I make the ordinary un-ordinary?’”

Vine grown

But rewind, for a moment, to an 8-year-old Campbell growing up in a house near Sebastiani Winery on Fourth Street East, a regular at the video rental store.

While Movie Merchants no longer exists, it was behind that store that Campbell remembers learning how to sketch comics from Bromley, who is now a senior producer at Lucasfilm, the entertainment company founded by “Star Wars” creator George Lucas.

“He was coming back to teach cartoons. And he taught me how to draw which is just a real wild set of events,” Campbell said. “I didn't think I was going to become a cartoonist, but there you have it.”

She originally went to the University of California, Santa Barbara to study film theory and pursued a career in the film industry, running the Slamdance Film Festival, an event for emerging artists in Park City, Utah; the city that also hosts the famed Sundance Film Festival.

In 2015, she moved to New York where she submitted cartoons to The New Yorker “every week” and waited for the stamp of approval for her comics.

At the same time, Campbell waited tables at “al di la Trattoria” in Brooklyn. Finally after a year, one of her cartoons, titled “Shipping and Handling Your Emotions,” was accepted. It depicted a series of mailing packages with a play on their common phrases: “Fragile since about 2012,” one package says.

Campbell’s handful of careers became fodder for her cartoonish ideas, she said. Now, she waits for the hilarious moments in anyone’s life.

“I draw out my friends’ experiences,” Campbell said. “When you start to become a cartoonist you kind of start stealing from other people's lives.”

Her “big break” came in 2016, she said, with the release of the book “Feminist Fight Club” by Jessica Bennet, a contributing editor to the New York Times opinion section.

The comics depict workplace images of women finding solidarity through Beyonce or creating a humorous flowchart to answer the question: Is it mansplaining? The success of that exposure propelled her into the new class of New Yorker cartoonists.

Explaining Sonoma to The New Yorker

“Feminist Fight Club” was released during a transitional period at The New Yorker’s cartoon department, which spurred a class of “old guard” cartoonists with legacy roles at the iconic publication, and “new guard” cartoonists who were relatively unknown, like Campbell.

At just 29, Emma Allen was hired as the first female editor of the cartoon section at The New Yorker. She launched her tenure by hiring a spree of other young cartoonists.

“I might not have a job without The New Yorker ‘new guard’ editor,” Campbell said. “She has brought in a ton of new talent. I'm very grateful because she brought me in.”

Many of The New Yorker’s cartoonists and writers live in New York, and many have lived there for decades. Even though she lives in Brooklyn now, Campbell, often finds herself drawn back to her hometown when seeking inspiration for her comical ideas.

Campbell’s cartoons on life in Sonoma are like a local version of the perennial “Goings On About Town” section of The New Yorker magazine. Jokes about excessive wine drinking and grapevines permeate her stacks of comics.

Growing up in Sonoma was a bore to Campbell, she said, and so familiar that you could “probably see someone you went to high school walk by, whether you want to or not.” But like many of the children who grew up in the Valley, move away and return for a visit, her perspective has shifted as she has matured. The “small town” moments of meeting a friend’s mom in the grocery store now offer comfort and humor.

“I think a funny thing that I’m always trying to explain (to New Yorker colleagues) is that it’s actually more of a farm town than people realize — it’s not some bougie place,” Campbell said.

While Sonoma has an influx of new residents seeking a life in Wine Country, she said Sonoma is full of nostalgia, from sipping wine on porches to walking past neighbors’ backyard vineyards. One example was a conversation she had with her boyfriend.

“(I) had a funny moment recently where my boyfriend, who works in wine, was visiting clients in Italy. He was sending me pictures of the countryside there,” Campbell said. “And I thought to myself: ‘That honestly just looks like Sonoma.’ We’re very lucky.”

Contact Chase Hunter at chase.hunter@sonomanews.com and follow @Chase_HunterB on Twitter.