Harold Joe Waldrum

Harold Joe Waldrum (August 23, 1934 – December 13, 2003) was an American artist whose abstract works depict color studies especially of the old adobe churches of Northern New Mexico. He also used a Polaroid SX-70 camera to photograph many of the churches, initially as part of the process in creating his paintings. However, this collection of thousands of photographs became a body of work in and of itself and was exhibited at several galleries and museums.

Before pursuing an artistic career, Waldrum graduated from Western State College and became a public school teacher in Kansas, where he taught music and art for a decade-and-a-half. After receiving a graduate degree from Fort Hays State College in 1970, he became a full-time painter, moving to New Mexico, the focal point of much of his work.

In the later part of his career, Waldrum endeavored to preserve the historic churches that were the inspiration for his paintings. In 1985, he founded an organization to promote this goal and produced a series of documentaries about the deterioration and ultimately demolition of the churches. In the 1980s and 90s, he collaborated with a few printmakers to create a collection of aquatint etchings and linocuts in a style very similar to his paintings.

Waldrum died on December 13, 2003, and he is buried in Columbus, New Mexico, a village near the Mexico–United States border. His works are held in the collections of the Museum of New Mexico, the Palm Springs Art Museum, the Albuquerque Museum, and the Harwood Foundation of Taos, New Mexico.

Biography

Early life Waldrum was born on August 23, 1934, in Savoy, Texas. He attended the Western State College, graduating from the Colorado school with a music degree. He then began working as a music and art teacher in the public schools around Kansas. He remained a teacher for about 14

Waldrum continued his education at Fort Hays State College. However, the following year, he had to flee to Texas and then even to Mexico, fearing for his life. On May 27, 1976, he had become involved in a dispute with several young men in the village, one of whom he had shot and killed. According to Waldrum, he had killed the man in self-defense. He began using a Polaroid SX-70 to capture angles and light conditions, but soon the photographs became artworks in their own right; throughout his life, he would capture nearly 9,000 Polaroid photographs, many of which are held at the photographic archives of the New Mexico History Museum at the Palace of Governors. The videotape culminates in the demolition of the building after significant deterioration due to lack of proper maintenance. They also created a series of videos documenting other churches, in Las Trampas and Picuris Pueblo, which were aired in local television channels. According to art historian Mary Anne Redding, Waldrum had “campaigned tirelessly to let people know how significant these structures were and why it was important to preserve them, not just as spiritual centers for isolated communities, but also to maintain the history and culture of Spanish New Mexico.” In 1994, he published an autobiography entitled Ando en Cueros (I Walk Stark Naked), perhaps a reference to his propensity for working in the nude.

Waldrum lived in Truth or Consequences until his death on December 13, 2003. Before his death, he often traveled to Albuquerque to work with the printmaker Michael Costello, as Blanchard had retired. Waldrum was buried in a cemetery near the Mexico–United States border in Columbus, New Mexico.

In 2011, the New Mexico History Museum and the Albuquerque Museum held simultaneous exhibits, titled "A Passionate Light", which showcased over a thousand of Waldrum's Polaroid photographs. Many of the "monoprints", as he referred to them, entered the New Mexico History Museum collection by way of a donation from the Waldrum Estate and the Rio Bravo Fine Art Gallery. and the University of New Mexico's Harwood Museum of Art in Taos. A group exhibition of his work along with those of artists Dan Namingha and Rufino Tamayo are being exhibited until October 3, 2017, at Museum Barberini in Potsdam, Germany.

Publications