J. Freels

Jeff "Olympia's Blind Cartoonist" is a storyteller who works through prose and pictures.

Influences include a lifelong love of folklore, monsters and 'the other', the interactive storytelling phenomena of table top role-playing games (Dungeons &

Dragons, Tunnels & Trolls, and his own game "BEAN The D2 RPG), and holistic healing modalities.

Jeff went to college at a little place in the trees called The Evergreen

State College. He studied English, and a little bit of art, and even

earned college credit in vampirology. He got into the Teaching

certification program with an essay on a teacher's interpretation of Mary

Shelly's Frankenstein, and received his Masters Degree in Teaching in

1993.

In order to pay the rent until he found a steady teaching job, he

somehow found himself working in places like

video arcades, comic book and gaming shops, a bookstore, and

managed to teach drawing and cartooning on the side.

It wasn't until Jeff was 32 that his eyes started to fall apart. The next

several years were filled with horrible surgeries and long painful

recovery periods. After each surgery he lost a bit more of his vision, but

kept working to relearn how to draw and as always, wrote.

Ok, So this Jeff guy is a visually impaired artist. What else does he

have going on? He writes. He's taught a bit at TESC, including subjects such as

distopian literature, Shakespeare, Folklore (with a bit of magic thrown in

for good measure) and of course a drawing/cartooning lesson here and

there. And he writes, and writes, and writes.