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Alex Belardo Kostiw’s self-publishing practice, exploring unknown parts and possibilities in our everyday realities. Rooted in visual communication and print, these works deal in poetic, adapted, and iterative elements, visual structures of comics, and conceptually driven forms. ︎info
︎ on a shelf / in a space
︎ on a shelf / in a space

3 Waves



Three accordion folds, 22 pages each, in an envelope, risograph, 2.5 x 2.75 inches

This is a collection about water: glancing along a beach; stirring inside a body; and shaping a human world. The text is assembled from bits and pieces of articles about exploration. The accordion-fold structure and slow revelatory rhythm are haiku-like—as the landscape unfolds, our sense of the scene at hand expands and shifts. Printed on the reverse side of each book is a black-and-white image of water.
These
books
are

︎ Alex Belardo Kostiw

Alex is an artist, graphic designer, and educator in Chicago making comics at the intersection of design and poetry. Their work frames moments when the everyday becomes nebulous; people seek connection across time and space; and the self feels like a stranger. It invites intuitive, multifaceted reading—even as it resists full unravelling.

Alex’s process often involves fragmenting, reframing, and/or combining different perspectives on everyday phenomena, such as reimagining birds as stories based on their names, or creating a sense of place by juxtaposing drawings from memory with old photographs. Through their practice, they guide readers toward fluid meanings in what seems fixed, making space for the familiar to become unknown and unknowable. Alex’s explorations include myth-making, in-betweenness, modes of inter/active reading, and books as installational projects.

Alex is an assistant professor in Visual Communication Design at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. They also teach printmaking at Spudnik Press, a community print shop, and design publications for institutions that center historically underrepresented voices in art and culture.

Alex holds an MFA in Visual Communication Design from SAIC and a BA in English Literature from the University of Chicago. They live with many reams of paper and two cats.

contact

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now / future

2025 Comic Arts Maine Portland (CAMP)expo; Jersey Art Book Fair.

past

Comics, Zine, and Art Book Fairs Boston Art Book Fair; Chicago Art Book Fair; Independent Artist Book Fair, New York; LA Art Book Fair (virtual); Seattle Art Book Fair; Autoptic, Minneapolis; CAKE, Chicago; CALA, LA; CXC, Columbus, OH; DiNK, Denver; MICE, Boston; SLICE, St. Louis; TCAF, Toronto; Zineland Terrace, Toronto. 
Exhibitions (*solo/two-person) Chicago Artist Coalition*, Chicago; Co-Prosperity, Chicago*; The Annex at Spudnik Press, Chicago*; Evanston Art Center, Evanston; Carlow University Art Gallery, Pittsburgh; Tephra ICA, Tephra, VA; Chicago Design Museum.
Residencies Chicago Artists Coalition HATCH Residency (2023–24); In Cahoots Residency (2022); Spudnik Press Artist Residency (2016–17).

collections

Joan Flasch Artist’s Book Collection at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago Zine Collection at the University of Chicago Library, Zine and Comics Collection at the MassArt Library, Decker Library at MICA, National Museum of Women in the Arts, Pratt Institute Artist’s Books Collection, RISD Artist’s Books Collection, Zine Collection at Tufts SMFA Library, Haas Arts Library Special Collections at Yale University.

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