Rate My Professor Kathleen Thum

Kathleen Thum is the Graduate Program Coordinator and Associate Professor of Art, Drawing in the Department of Art at Clemson University’s College of Architecture, Art and Construction. She earned her BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore from 1989 to 1992 and her MFA from Bowling Green State University in Ohio from 1998 to 2000. Thum joined Clemson University in 2011 as Assistant Professor of Drawing, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2017, and assumed the role of Graduate Program Coordinator for the MFA in Visual Arts program in 2022. Her prior academic appointments include Visiting Assistant Professor at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York, from 2006 to 2011; Visiting Assistant Professor of Freshman Foundations at the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University from 2003 to 2006; Instructor of Drawing at Bowling Green State University from 2001 to 2003; and Instructor at Jumpstart, the Pre-college Visual Arts Workshop at Oregon State University in 2003-2004.

Thum’s drawings, paintings, and wall installations obsessively depict pipeline forms to reference the vast and intricate production systems of industrial landscapes, particularly those involving fossil fuels. By abstractly rendering pipelines as organic expansions, her work presents these man-made structures as living entities that grow and alter the earth, examining the shifting power between humanity and natural biomorphic configurations. She has maintained an active exhibition record with numerous solo and group shows across the United States. Solo exhibitions include “The Shapes of Extraction” at Greenly Gallery, Commonwealth University of Pennsylvania (2025); “Covering Carbon” at Biggin Gallery, Auburn University (2024), UCF Art Gallery (2023), and Turchin Center for the Visual Arts, Appalachian State University (2023); “Gathering Lines” at Wilson Hall Gallery, University of Alabama in Huntsville (2017); “Residuum” at Thompson Gallery, Furman University (2014); and “Petrolia” at M.G. Nelson Family Gallery, Springfield Art Association (2016). Notable group exhibitions feature “Man + Land + Water” at Winthrop University (2015); “SouthxEast” at Florida Atlantic University (2018); “Nowhere Everywhere” at Cambridge School of Weston (2016); and inclusions in the Manifest International Drawing Annual Exhibition in Print for 2014, 2015, and 2017. Thum received a Faculty Research Development Grant from the College of Architecture, Art and Construction at Clemson University. As Graduate Program Coordinator, she oversees the MFA program, contributing to art education and contemporary drawing practices.