Alex Stadler is a multidisciplinary artist, author, textile designer, illustrator and curator. Stadler has written and illustrated more than 10 published books for children and adults (Farrar Strauss & Giroux; Harcourt; Simon and Schuster; Scholastic; Chronicle), most of which deal with themes of emotional intelligence. Stadler has created public artwork and murals for Colette Paris, Reading Terminal Market and Comcast in Philadelphia, and Saks 5th Avenue's flagship store in New York City. As an illustrator/textile designer, he has created his own line of knitted scarves and blankets, stadler-Kahn, and has collaborated with and designed for Comme des Garçons, Jack Lenor Larsen, GapKid, Todd Oldham, and Whoopi Goldberg. In Philadelphia, Stadler has curated shows at The Art Alliance, The Clay Studio and The Independence Seaport Museum. These included a retrospective of the work of ceramic artist Rose Cabat, 1917-2016, whose work is held in the collections of MoMA and the Smithsonian, and Homework, a dual show of Erin Endicott's embroidered paintings and the neo-crochet pieces of Asimina Chremos. In April of 2019 Stadler had a one-person show of oil paintings, textiles and ceramics at The Clay Studio. He currently shows his porcelain and stoneware pieces at Big Apple Design in Milan, Room 68 in Provincetown, Egan Rittenhouse in Philadelphia and Kneeland & co in Los Angeles. Since 2012, he has been a featured artist at annual or biannual live customization drawing events in Japan (Tokyo, Kyoto, Kobe, Osaka) as well as at one-off drawing events in Miami and Milan.
As an entrepreneur, in 2011, Stadler created P.POD (Philadelphia Produces Original Design) - a 400 square foot pop up shop within the Philadelphia Museum of Art's main retail space, featuring products from 40 Philadelphia-based designers and producers. One year later he opened stadler-Kahn in the Rittenhouse Square neighborhood, a hybrid gallery/design shop where for six years he produced an average of six exhibits a year, of work by mid-career and emerging Philadelphia artists and designers, always shown alongside stadler-Kahn textiles and an extensive collection of 19th and 20th century decorative art.
Through 2022, Stadler will be creating his own work and directing a team of artists to construct a memorial for ten Philadelphians who died in the early days of the AIDS crisis and whose remains remain unclaimed. This work, conceived by Stadler, will be part of a larger initiative led by the William Way Community Center. The project is funded by a grant from the Pew Center for Arts and Heritage.