Brett Callero

Brett Callero was raised on the northern outskirts of Chicago, in the suburban town of Niles. The suburban surroundings were quite typical of a place developed during the first phase of urban sprawl. Suburban culture quite often equals stolen culture. This has become a harbinger for the use of appropriation in Callero’s work. Growing up, Callero played games likes Trivial Pursuit. He memorized the music charts and made up his own. Continuously, he soaked up the facts and figures of pop culture. Compulsively, he read the almanac and studied the atlas to satisfy his obsessive need for map-based knowledge. Along the way, Callero immersed himself in his own visual language, suggestive of the non-fiction he loved.

Brett Callero has a diversified background. He earned his MFA in Painting after working in Chicago as a graphic designer/art director for over a decade. Callero continues to make and exhibit art on a regular basis. Presently, he lives in Atlanta, where he is a working artist, facilitator of creative thinking, and a professor at the Savannah College of Art & Design (SCAD-Atlanta).