Join visiting artist Thomas Schram and Parts & Labor for a pop up exhibition along the San Antonio River.
In January of 2025, Schram created an installation entitled "Holding Water" while a resident artist at the Bascom Center for the Visual Arts in Highlands, NC. This piece examines the history of a landscape decimated by industry and the present where extreme weather events wreak havoc. The work integrates artifacts of post storm conditions, namely the boxes of shelf stable water the city of Asheville gave out during the weeks when potable water was unavailable. Schram’s use of found materials aims to draw our attention to the vitalism of natural resources. Dramatic weather events, industry, urban growth, diminishment of national agencies charged with environmental management, leave all of us in a precarious relationship to these waters.
Artist Bio
Tom Schram lives in Asheville, North Carolina, and works as an Assistant Professor of Sculpture at Western Carolina University. His exhibition record includes Art Fields (Lake City, SC), Lyndon House (Athens, GA), Bascom Center for the Visual Arts (Highlands, NC), Echo Contemporary (Atlanta, GA), Del Mar College (Corpus Christi, TX), and Eastern Mennonite University (Harrisburg, PA), He obtained a BFA in Painting from UNC Asheville and an MFA in Sculpture from Clemson University.
Schram’s studio work involves a conversational relationship between viewer, place and material. He works in a variety of methods including object making, interactive installation, video, and sound and is intrigued by the continually progressive use of technology in daily life as it intersects, and at times conflicts with, one’s ability to experience and observe actual physical and social landscapes.
He has worked as a professional fabricator on projects such as the High Line in New York City and the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. He has given several lectures on his work including the last two SECAC Conferences, presenting Examining Site Identity in Georgia’s Production Forests and Post Consumer Making Materials.