Thomas Schram, The Bascom’s 2024-2025 Winter Resident Artist, is an Asheville-based artist and educator whose work delves into the intersections of technology, consumption, and the natural world. Through installations that blend video, sound, and object-making, Schram creates immersive experiences that prompt reflection on the hidden costs of modern life.
His forthcoming installation draws inspiration from the environmental and historical scars left by Hurricane Helene and the logging industry. By incorporating found objects and repurposed media, Schram crafts a poignant exploration of destruction, renewal, and shared histories, inviting viewers to consider humanity’s impact on the environment and the potential for recovery.
Currently a sculpture professor at Western Carolina University, Schram holds an MFA from Clemson University and a BFA from UNC Asheville. His practice is grounded in a profound understanding of materiality and process, coupled with a commitment to fostering dialogue through art.
Artist Statement on the Exhibition
For the past two years I’ve been conducting research focusing on production forests in the Southeast. This project is a continuation of that work.
I’m particularly interested in actions taken that alter the landscape as part of the logging traditions. In the past, splash dams and log flumes were constructed to make it possible to transport trees from remote regions to more accessible staging points or destinations. Splash dams were built to use existing mountain creeks and streams to float trees down the mountains. The makeshift dams would flood the stream giving it enough capacity for the logs. Large doors built in the dams would allow the logs and water to move from one section of the creek to the next. Flumes were large troughs elevated above ground coursing down the mountain side, built to create a type of man-made stream the logs would rush down.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Helen, I began looking for a way to process the incredible sadness that I felt for my friends, neighbors and the region at large. I found the intersection of trees, water, and human construction/ industry to be a shared set of foundation elements for both the events of the storm and these historical practices of altering waterways. The resulting work is an installation that acts as a log flume in the shape of the French Broad River, which is a conveyor of a video projection.
For this project I am building a flume structure out of found materials – debris essentially, elements that were directly related to or impacted by the storm. These include a metal shed in our yard that was crushed when two pine trees fell on it, branches from these downed pine trees, fiber optic cable torn down, an old dresser that became waterlogged. Besides the material touched by the storm itself, the piece integrates artifacts of the post storm conditions, mainly the potable water boxes the city of Asheville gave out while potable water was unavailable. I began the project by building a cardboard model of the flume out of these boxes, which will also be on display in the gallery.
I saw this project as an opportunity to reflect on the events of last fall, and my experiences of them, but to also see the storm as a link in a chain. This region has a long relationship with the land, its waterways and its trees. Through logging and the birth of forestry, past floods, and past storms, we have had a powerful and dynamic relationship with the land and its resources. There is toughness and resilience on all sides. I hope the exhibition feels somber and quiet, bringing some space for reflection on our history and present.
The title makes reference to both the physical nature of elements like dams, flumes, and rivers controlling the flow of waterways as well as the notion of whether or not an idea is sound.
