DRURY BRENNAN

ABOUT DRURY BRENNAN

 

Drury Brennan was born on April 18, 1981 in St. Paul, Minnesota. Growing up he had access to his father’s vinyl record collection and spent much time at a local recording studio and record store. “It was a one-in-a-billion-chance education in culture that is surely the foundation of who I am today” (Brennan 2014). Brennan still remembers when he was three years old, his father giving him a copy of Grandmaster Flash's “The Message” on vinyl; “having that record both aurally and graphically changed my life forever” (Brennan 2014). When he was eight years old, Brennan moved to Los Angeles for his father’s work in the music industry but things went sour when his parents got divorced – he was eleven years old at the time. It was in LA that Brennan discovered the art of street graffiti and was exposed to Japanese culture – two of the most prominent influences for Brennan’s work today.  

 

Brennan got his first job when he was 12 years old, cleaning a travel agency three times a week with his father. He recalled fondly, “it was the first time I got my own money and [I] spent it all on records” (Brennan 2014).

Brennan Does not fondly recall his high school years:

“High school was a terrible time for me. I had a 14 hour school day every day, I was poor as hell, I was stuck in a school completely not for me, no one gave a shit about me, not even my parents, and I was a complete loser in the Music program… I hated everything about myself mentally and physically and was stuck this way until getting a scholarship to SAIC (School of the Art Institute in Chicago) in 2004.” (Brennan 2014)

 

After graduating high school in 1999, Brennan got a job working as a phone psychic in a weed dealer's garage in Encino, CA for three months. After that he worked at Interscope Records where he recalled meeting Eminem. Next Brennan found himself working as an assistant World Music buyer for Virgin Megastore on the Sunset Strip – a dramatic, exciting and celebrity filled period. His next employment was at a bookstore nearby for a period of 3 years. That was where Brennan received a “modern introduction to photography through books by Wolfgang Tillmans, [and] Terry Richardson” (Brennan 2014). The whirlwind of employment didn’t end there. Next Brennan worked at a Kinko's Copies in Sherman Oaks, CA writing quant biographies for the portfolios for adult film actresses and just before leaving for college he served a short stint as a receptionist for a bank.

 

In college, things took a turn for the better. Between the years of 2004 and 2008 Brennan explored the medium of photography for which he was given significant amounts of scholarship money. In 2005 he traveled to Japan to produce a photo essay which to this day stands out as a defining event in Brennan’s education. It was in college that Brennan discovered the art of ceramics. During this time, he landed a job as a photographer for a large ad agency with equally large budgets; he got flown all over the country and was extremely successful.

 

After graduating from college in 2008 Brennan worked as an editor of Flaunt Magazine in Los Angeles for two years which he then quit to teach ceramics at Bitter Root ceramic studio. During that time he also worked at Xiem Clay Center in Pasadena. Since 2012, Brennan has made a living off his artwork in Berlin with occasional help from small odd jobs.

 

Drury Brennan currently lives and works in Berlin which he considers to be the most significant thing to ever happen to him. “This place has freed me as a person and an artist. The air is different here. It's peaceful. You don't need a car. The swans swim in the canal. The dogs are off leashes. The best clubs in the world are 10 minutes from my doorstep” (Brennan 2014).