Wednesday, August 31, 2016

Kathleen Thum, Assistant Professor of Art at Clemson University, to Present at Petro Cultures 2016 in Newfoundland, Canada

Kathleen Thum, Slope Scarp, 2013
Ink and Graphite on Layers of Mylar, 21” x 16”
Prof. Thum's paper is entitled, “Depicting Carrying Capacity: Imagine Petroscapes” at the Petrocultures Conference, August 31 – September 3, 2016, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. Johns, Newfoundland, as a part of the panel, See the Spills, chaired by Mandy Rowsell.

The complete panel consists of:
  • Bart Welling, Petro-Apocalypse, Petro-Gothic, and the Poetics of Reinhabitation: Failures and Renewals of Imagination in the Post-Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico 
  • Emily Roehl, SPILL: Performing Loss in the Oily Landscapes of Southern Louisiana 
  • Kathleen Thum, Depicting Carrying Capacity: Imagined Petroscapes
The Petrocultures conference is an international conference bringing together scholars, policy makers, industry employees, artists and public advocacy groups to discuss the social and cultural dimensions of oil and energy. http://petrocultures2016.ca 

About her work, Thum writes: "My drawings and paintings are a hybrid of various human physiological systems and man-made manufacturing systems, which I depict through rendering abstract networks of forms, lines, and color. Like our internal anatomy, the structures in my works are layered, linear, flowing, clustered, open, dense, intertwined; interpreting gravity, fluids, gases, and pressures. The complex relationship between the man-made and the natural has become increasing influential in my artwork. The drawings and paintings evolve as I use color and layering to create new imagery based on the fascinating inter-workings of systems both functional and dysfunctional."

For more about Prof. Thum's work, please go to: http://kathleenthum.com/home.html.