About

Assembling The Artist’s Story: Meet the artist behind the Mixed Media

A picture of the artist. A middle-aged, caucasian man with dark brown hair. He is wearing a black, button down shirt. He is smiling and has his arms folded across his chest.

Raised at the intersection of engineering and fine art by an electrical engineer father and an artist mother, Bret Schwalb was encouraged early to dismantle, explore, and tinker with the mechanical world. Shaped by the foundational ethos of historic innovators like Nikola Tesla, Buckminster Fuller and Keith Haring, Bret’s artistic journey bridges meticulous structure and expressive freedom.

Though he earned a degree in industrial design and spent years leading software and product experience design, the pull of fine art remained undeniable. Today, that background in human-centric design informs everything he creates and deeply influences how he collaborates with private commission clients to translate their personal narratives into bespoke dimensional art.

At its core, Bret’s work is a study in transforming discarded and overlooked materials into forms that are harmonious, evocative, and touchable. Rather than utilizing objects as-is, he breaks them down to their base components. A shattered picture frame yields glistening crystalline glass. Oil-stained copper wire is wrestled, unspooled, and cleaned from salvaged industrial motors.

Working primarily with acrylic as a sculpting foundation, alongside bismuth metal, copper, and reclaimed wood, Bret seeks out the forgotten to give them a new, celebrated story. Grounded in a personal spiritual framework of grace and second chances, his work serves as a quiet meditation on inner beauty, resilience, and finding the delightfully unexpected in the mundane.

Artist Statement

My art practice is dedicated to giving forgotten, discarded, and underestimated things a new, celebrated story. Working primarily with acrylic paint, bismuth metal, copper wire, and glass, the underlying construction is my personal exploration of quietly breaking expectations and pushing a material’s limits. The visuals are a meditation and space for the viewer to explore the story they find in the piece. I use acrylic medium more as a support and construction material for the rest of the piece, resulting in work that bridges the gap between painting and sculpture.