A native of Sumter, S.C., Corrie McCallum enrolled at the University of South Carolina in 1932 and received a certificate in fine arts three years later. It was there that she met her future husband, William Halsey. He went on to the prestigious School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, where she also earned a scholarship for two years of study. They married after that but McCallum kept her name "because I did not want to get mixed with who was what." She said, "I am against the isolation of art groupings...the uniqueness of the individual is what is most important." She was determined to chart her own course as a woman and as a creator. She and Halsey decided to travel to Mexico when he was awarded a fellowship to to study abroad. With war raging in Europe, this proved a fortuitous choice. McCallum had chafed at the conservative curriculum in her university years. She and Halsey eagerly embraced a less familiar culture. During World War II they moved to Savannah, Georgia, where she worked at the Telfair Academy. When they returned to Charleston, South Carolina, in 1945 she taught at the Gibbes Art Gallery (now the Gibbes Museum of Art) until 1953. She continued to follow the New York City art scene, especially the abstract expressionists who influenced her work. A woodblock and linoleum printmaker, she also did lithography and was a prolific painter. She died in 2009.