Scott L. Thein, age 69 years, Of Great Bend, Kansas, passed away on Wednesday, June 8, 2022, at Aster Estates in Great Bend. Scott was born in Seattle, Washington, and grew up in Sand Diego, California. He attended the University of California Berkeley where he graduated with high honors and was awarded a degree in philosophy. He then moved to New York City, New York, where he lived for over 40 years. It was there that he picked up a pencil and began to chronicle his experience of life within the warrens of the urban grid. Most recently Scott moved to Great Bend, Kansas to be among friends. He is survived by a brother Stephen Thein.
Scott was an artist, a melancholic philosopher and critic of the human condition. He had an analytical intellect that bordered on tragic genius. His art and his conversation revealed an obsessive need to expose inner connections and workings hidden beneath mundane social realities. Scott had a particular love and spiritual connection to the writings of Martin Heidegger.
In one exhibition, Scott used drawings, done on cast off shopping bags, to illustrate the famous philosopher’s way of interpreting the world. In his introduction to the series “Heidegger’s Ghost” he wrote, “… the shopping bag in becoming abandoned, useless, refuse, is becoming its own unique ontology which can then be transformed into a work of art.” Which is to say that when something or someone no longer fulfills its assigned function in the world and loses its labels it can be seen with new eyes. Scott embraced this sense of estrangement in his life and his art. He says in the same essay that our personal feelings of alienation “seem strange to us and in its strangeness we can picture it and we can draw it.”
A Memorial Celebration and scattering of cremated remains will be held on Saturday, June 25, 2022, at 10:30 AM on the campus of Aster Estates, 155 NW 10 Avenue, Great Bend, Kansas. Refreshments and good conversation will be provided.
Memorials in Scott’s name may be made to the Barton Community College Foundation (aka Barton Foundation) for the Shafer Art Gallery.