Whether he’s illustrating pizza boxes or Subway sandwich wrappers, mural walls or pickleball courts, custom sneakers or $300K cars, stream-of-consciousness artist Alex Alpert has created his signature hypnotic line drawings for clients all over the globe, from athletes (Tom Brady, Serena Williams) to musicians (Fisher, Kaskade) to brands (Red Bull, Bugatti). Recently, however, he turned his attention toward the Garden State to create the cover for New Jersey Monthly’s November 2026 Top Doctors issue.
Though Alpert currently resides in Manhattan, his Ridgewood roots run deep. On an idyllic and unseasonably warm fall day, the 32-year-old creator is perched outside downtown’s Ridgewood Coffee Co. with an iced cold brew, turning every which way to point out nostalgic haunts, family routines, restaurant gigs he was fired from as a teen. A few doors down from us: the dance studio where his parents, an opera singer and a journalist, take classes. Across the street: a spot that served massive pancakes. A few blocks that way: Felina, where he married Maddie, who grew up on the same block. Over there: the historic, now-shuttered Warner Theater (he and Maddie attended the final movie screening). As if on cue, a guy he hasn’t seen since high school approaches. They excitedly catch up, then exchange numbers.
Alpert praises the arts education he received in Ridgewood and speaks fondly of Mrs. Manke, a beloved art teacher from George Washington Middle School, who recently passed away. He worked on part of the NJM cover in his childhood bedroom here and says the project made him “happy to reconnect with this place that was formative for me.”
We chatted about the happy accidents that arose during the design process, why he values ephemeral art and how he hopes readers will react to his cover.
You’ve said that you grew up gazing at Manhattan from Ridgewood and were inspired by the skyline’s geometric lines, which now seep into your drawing style.
I’m very influenced by New York City art, street art—often my style gets compared to Keith Haring because it’s that black-and-white line-art vibe. I certainly took that in.
In Ridgewood, there’s a spot they call the View, and it’s basically a big hill with a big stone fence and the most amazing view of the city. It was a classic—we’d go up and hang out there, and it was inspiring as a suburban kid, looking at the city.
Are you familiar with the philosophy around Jersey existing in the shadow of New York City? Does that resonate with you?
Definitely. Snobby city people—and I’m a snobby city person now, I guess—they’ll be like, ‘Oh, Jersey has a bad rep.’ But in actuality, once you get into big art circles or business circles, Jersey’s everywhere. Gosh, I’ll be at an F1 race in Monaco and see somebody from Bergen County. Jersey is pervasive. We get everywhere, in all levels and industries, and there is a very special connection among Jersey people because it’s a bit of this underdog thing.
When our art director Gail was looking for a cover illustrator and discovered your work, she didn’t even realize you were from Jersey at first. I kind of love the idea that there was maybe something Jersey-esque in your art that resonated with her, just on a more subconscious level.
I like that, I like that. Must be!
Had you ever done a magazine cover before this one for NJM?
You know, I had not!
We’re honored to be the first. When you get an assignment like this cover, does your brain immediately start filling with images and ideas? And if so, do you then try to tamp them down until you’re ready to actually work on it, to maintain spontaneity? Or do you let yourself actively mull things over and cull inspiration before sitting down?
A little bit of both, I’d say. I definitely don’t try to repress it, and sometimes I will have something of an image in my head in terms of formatting and dimensions. In this case, I needed to know where the cover text would be.
Because my art is dense, I look at it almost with a bird’s-eye view of balance. So it’s less about, like, a focal point in the corner—I instead want it to be balanced throughout so that your eye gets brought into a different thing every time you look at it. So it’s hard to plan that, you know? I have an overall idea of themes; I do a lot of research. I read a lot—in this case, about New Jersey—and think about the primary themes I want to incorporate. For me with this cover, that was a lot of Shore and boardwalk vibes. I put a lot of thought into: How do I make it medical, doctor-y, but without being corny? Something that doesn’t look like a sign you’d see at your doctor’s office. Something you can see as a piece of art, but that also tells the story.
Did you encounter any unexpected turns or happy accidents while working on the cover?
Lots. There are always a lot of happy accidents with my art because it’s spontaneous—I’ll start something and not necessarily know where it’s going. So, like, there’s a strand of DNA on the cover. I didn’t know where that was going, but it ended up merging into the top of the boardwalk. That stuff happens a lot. Or I had the zigzag line of a heartbeat morph into the ocean waves and wind. In the lungs, I had the bronchi turn into a tree, which I thought was cool. All of those things are kind of accidents—I didn’t think too hard about them, but they just happened.
You create your art on items with varying degrees of disposability. But you’ve said that you approach everything in a similar way, except when it comes to considering the scale, right?
Yeah—the nature of what I do, especially the live art, is that I don’t necessarily know what’s gonna happen to it after. Somebody described it as “ephemeral art,” which is very street art-ish, because you could work on a mural and it could get sprayed on by somebody else or painted over.
It’s very interesting because then I talk to people in the fine-art gallery world, and that ephemerality is like, the biggest sin ever. In their world, every painting and drawing you make needs to be, like, stowed away. I don’t feel that strongly about it. I’m just making stuff, and sometimes I think it’s kinda cool that I don’t know what ends up happening to it.
And I don’t think just because some of my stuff is ephemeral like that or it’s on a Subway wrapper doesn’t mean that I can’t also sell a painting for a lot of money, which I’ve done, too. But I think it’s nice to be able to have these very valuable things and then have things that are accessible, that anybody can relate to.
You’ve done street art all over the world—have you ever done any in Jersey?
One of the brands I work with most is Sharpie, which is owned by Newell Brands. I did a mural for their Hoboken office. That was fun—I’d take the train to Hoboken and work on it. In late 2019, I did a mural in Jersey City—it’s not there anymore—as part of a public arts fund. I’m talking right now about doing one in a building in Waldwick. I’m supposed to have some art inside the new Springsteen museum at Monmouth…
Oh, tell me more—we did a cover story on the Springsteen Center earlier this year!
So, a friend of mine fabricates metal—all his steel and stuff is all over the Barclays Center—and he did the metal for the Springsteen Center. We’re talking about engraving my artwork into the metal there, which would be a lot of fun. That’s been in the works for a while. New Jersey is still such a core part of me, so I definitely want to do more art here.
When you were younger, you were more involved in realism, but then at a certain point, you realized it wasn’t making you happy because you were compelled to be too perfectionistic. Your current style leads you to a flow state where you’re able to shut out overthinking and be more expressive. Despite that freedom, is it still unnerving to take a Sharpie to a $300,000 car?
Yeah—now I’m used to it, but the first few times, my hand was definitely shaking a little bit. But now, like with Lexus, I’ve drawn on, like, six of their cars this year, and I hope to kind of have it down. What I’ve found with every project, especially because I work with so many different materials, is that everything is a learning experience with a lot of trial and error: What paint am I gonna use? What marker? What’s the best tip? There are a lot of variables, and that’s actually one of the things I like most about it. The challenge keeps things interesting. There’s always that anxiety before every project: Am I going to be able to figure it out? But I always do. You just gotta try enough stuff until you figure out what works. That’s kind of the fun part.
Do you get a feeling about when a piece is finished? Obviously you have deadlines and other restrictions—but is it generally related to the balance of a piece?
Yeah, it’s definitely a balance thing. I’ll kind of zone out a little bit and make my eyes blurry so that I can only really see the lights and darks, and be like, There’s a little too much shading here compared to here; I need to balance it out. I can just keep going and add more and more detail, detail, detail—but I’ve gotten better at gauging when something feels finished. There’s only so much time, so you get decent at estimating how long something’s gonna take—whether it’s a mural or a car or a magazine cover.
Is there a specific reaction that you hope people have when they see your magazine cover in their mailbox or on a newsstand?
I hope they’re like, ‘That guy’s from Jersey. That guy’s one of us.’ I hope it’s compelling, and I hope that people really spend some time and look at it, think about it, analyze it and see the different little Easter egg-type things.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
