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- 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. (en)
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