Bret Schwalb is an award winning artist living in the greater Chicago area. His art journey started at age 8 at summer art camp. “Our camp counselors encouraged exploration and curiosity with a wide range of media which sparked my deep love for creating art. I still have some of the ceramics I made in those classes.” His art practice continued through an internship as a mechanical designer and earning a degree in industrial design. That technical experience now factors in Bret’s artistic constructions.

He is heavily influenced by designers like Buckminster Fuller, and artists like Claude Monet, Keith Haring, Steven Spielberg, and Tim Burton. It is not these pioneers’ body of work as much as their example of breaking expectations, experimentation, and following their own voice that Bret finds both encouraging and exciting.

Bret explores what he calls the “what if stories” that combine the unexpected, silly, or joyful. Any found object is fair game for his mixed media pieces, including paint, which he uses more as a sculpting material than for illustration.

His process is simple, starting by thinking in terms of “yes and” and “what if” to combine the unexpected and build a story about the piece. That story can be as simple as “what if trees where balloons, but also kites” or more elaborate stories about a village in a tin and what the people who live there do all day.

Art continues to be a source of comfort and encouragement in Bret’s life. His goal is to help other people find their creative voice, and explore their own unexpected stories.