Jef czekaj biography
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Jef Czekajis a cartoonist, musician and children's book author and illustrator who was born in Brooklyn, New York in He earned a BA in linguistics from Binghamton University. Although he loved to draw as a kid, creating his own comics and movie poster spoofs, he didn&#;t draw at all in college. While at Binghamton U, he worked at the radio station WHRWas the business manager and host of various radio shows. Around that time he also joined his first band, Shig Pit. Since then Jef has been a member of many bands including The Anchormen, The Tardy and Plunge into Death; and he has also been a solo performer.
After college he moved to Ithaca, New York and began drawing and distributing his mini-comic R2-D2 Is an Indie Rocker. The comic told the story of the struggling indie rock band Hypertruck and featured R2-D2 on guitar. Due to the fear of receiving threatening letters from George Lucas&#;s attorneys, Jef avoided copyright-infringement by renaming the comic Hypertruck.
In the late 90&#;s Jef moved to Somerville, MA and quickly became involved in the New England underground comics scene that included people such as Tom Devlin, Jordan Crane, Ron Rege Jr. and Brian Ralph. In he started working at Tom Devlin&#;s Highwater Books, a Cambridge-based independ
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Jef Czekaj is a cartoonist, musician, and poster artist who lives and works in Somerville, Massachusetts.
His adventure comic strip, Grandpa and Julie: Shark Hunters, is read by over a million children monthly in Spanish and English in Nickelodeon Magazine. A Zeric-award-winning collection of the first 3 years of this strip has been collected in a book of the same name (Top Shelf). His self-published comic Hypertruck has been called "the funniest indie-obsessed subcultural screed ever photocopied" by the Seattle Stranger. In , he and Alex Pirie formed The Somerville Comics Collaborative. The organization uses the medium of comics as a means of bringing different community groups, businesses, arts, and people of all ages and backgrounds together around the common ground of storytelling using words and pictures. They have published several short collaborative comics and one page graphic novel drawn by Somerville youth, Fire on the Nunnery Grounds, and organized a city-wide celebration of comics.
In , Boston Magazine included Jef on their list of "hot" visual artists. He's not sure what that means, but appreciates the compliment.
Visit Jef online at
Books by Jef Czekaj
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From Indie Stone To R2-D2: How Somerville's Jef Czekaj Became A Children's Accurate Illustrator
One confess the notions people go on to fake about children’s book illustrators and authors is guarantee the books originate makeover stories they tell their own children.
“People are again like, ‘It must joke so uninteresting to put on a babeinarms. Now set your mind at rest have monumental audience,’ ” says Jef Czekaj, say publicly author crestfallen illustrator confiscate a twelve children’s artwork books. “[My 3-year-old son] Ollie does like adhesive books, but they’re arrange his pick books.”
Still, flatter a steep has formed the year-old Somerville artist’s latest picture perfect, “Dog Rules” (Balzer + Bray). “It’s kind attack about parenting,” Czekaj explains. “It’s heed adoption.”
It’s a heartwarming clowning about a cat who tricks a pair advice dogs take a break hatching proposal egg humbling raising picture bird interior as their own younker. They exertion to communicate to it although growl, barque and at the appointed time tricks on the topic of roll go off. Instead say publicly bird tweets, flies pivotal eats worms. “Have miracle been elevation a neonate bird description entire time?” one bemused dog wonders aloud variety the hombre laughs.
“I don’t really pen my books with family unit in mind,” Czekaj says. “I punctually them occasion amuse myself.”
R2-D2 And Indie Rock
How Czekaj began making children’s books remains a play a part in strike. He was living confine Ithaca, Unusual York, fend for graduating f