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
book/marks, 2019 —
This series crystallizes those aimless images and thoughts that I keep returning to, while exploring the possibilities of a 7 x 2-inch format.
I: A Name
12 pages, saddle-stitch binding, risograph, 7 x 2 inches
A Name is a brief, personal reflection on what it might mean to make a person. With images that allude to Greek mythology, Penelope, “the name without a girl,” is my idea of a daughter.
II: Wendr
12 pages, saddle-stitch binding, risograph, 7 x 2 inches
Wendr is a spell, cast on me by a stick I saw on the ground c. 2017. Years later, I was still thinking about it. Ruminating on magical wands, the book changes in orientation and reading direction so that reading it is akin to the pull and push of energy that characterizes magic.
Meanwhile, a witch wanders, wandless...
III: 6 Wings
6 pages, accordion fold, reduction woodcut, glue, 2022, 7 x 2 inches
6 Wings reimagines the mythological multi-limbed, winged Geryon, whom Hercules murdered for his red cows. Few depictions of Geryon have survived antiquity. To echo that, making this book, a reduction woodcut print with collaged covers, involved destroying the print matrix and parts of the prints. The book embraces Geryon as a fugitive body—forever beyond our grasp.
IV: Somewhere, a witch wanders, wandless
16 pages, accordion fold, risograph, 2024, 7 x 2 inches
In book/mark IV, a witch seeks her missing friend, slipping and tumbling, pacing and falling through panel after panel, page after page. Will she ever find it?
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.
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.
sign-off
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.
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).