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Jef Czekaj is an illustrator, cartoonist, musician, and poster artist. His critically-acclaimed comic, "Grampa and Julie: Shark Hunters" is read by over a million children monthly in Spanish and English in the magazine Nickelodeon. His self-published comic Hypertruck has been called "the funniest indie-obsessed subcultural screed ever photocopied" by the Seattle Stranger. His work has been exhibited at the Zeitgeist Gallery, the Brickbottom Gallery, the Diesel Cafe, the Someday Cafe, the Washington St. Arts Center, and hung on telephone poles throughout Boston. His logo for the City of Somerville's Art Beat Festival appeared on t-shirts, posters, banners, and aprons in the summer of 2002. He has been awarded several Massachusetts Cultural Council grants. In 1999, 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, artists, 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 96-page graphic novel drawn by Somerville youth, Fire on the Nunnery Grounds, and organized a city-wide celebration of comics. He is a founding member of the Handstand Command music collective, a small group of like-minded musicians based in Somerville. He performs in smoky bars in bands with tragically-doomed names like The Tardy, The Anchormen, Sinkcharmer, and Plunge Into Death. He lives and works in Somerville, Massachusetts.
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