Culture:

H. Joe Waldrum’s New Mexico light transports the spirit

by Sierra County Sun | October 23, 2019
4 min read

​Truth or Consequences in particular and New Mexico in general can claim the great artist H. Joe Waldrum, not because he is a native, but because he did his most important art work here.

Rio Bravo Fine Art, which he founded in 1998, holds the greatest number of his paintings and prints. A retrospective of his work will be up at the gallery until Jan. 26, 2020, giving the art world a chance to re-weigh his contribution to the art world.

The show is essentially a recapitulation of all his various periods. This article, however, will concentrate on what he called his “window” or “triptych” series, which will bring out his core formal concerns. They sound boring in description—squares within squares of different colors and textures–and photographs do them no justice. They must be experienced. He did them in the 1970s and 80s.

Waldrum, whose writing relates experiences, showing rather than telling, said in his book, “Ando en Cueros (I Walk Stark Naked),” he purposely stripped his focus down to essentials to get rid of any abstract-expressionist influences he had assumed. Although he was successful with and known for those paintings, he realized they weren’t coming from his true self, what he called his “ordinary.”

Light being a primary focus in his work makes pinning down his locale important.

In his book, he said he had a show in Santa Fe seven years into the window series. He had lived three of those years in New York and four in New Mexico, but “never once had I looked at a New York window as subject matter for my paintings.”

He was annoyed with a reporter who praised the series but claimed they were New York, not New Mexico paintings.

“There was absolutely nothing New York about them. They were and still are as New Mexican as the back of the church at Ranchos de Taos.” Out of annoyance, he did a painting of the back of that church and then resumed his window series, he said.

“Today, [1994 the book was published] as I paint in my studio, my concerns are still about middleground [sic], foreground, and background: they are a continuation of those earlier value and color studies. Beyond these considerations, I have nothing to explain except that the windows transport my spirit.”

In the book, Waldrum makes much of the fact that his photographs, prints and paintings are all of a piece, and art-gallery representatives and art critics couldn’t tell them apart. “It’s how I see the world. . .It’s my vision. . .it’s what I see. . .It looks that way to me,” he said.

Taking Waldrum at his word, it would therefore be a mistake to look at his window series as abstract. They may look like minimalist abstract New York paintings to the uninitiated, but that’s because Waldrum saw the world stripped down in light sensations. The paintings relay very concrete relationships of light in New Mexico.

I don’t know if these triptychs are consistently arranged as outer square corresponding to background, middle square to middleground and inner square to foreground. I am certain, however, Waldrum had as finely gauged an inner light meter as is possible to develop, feeling and recording how light reflected off the hills, mountains and sky at all different times of day and night.

His book makes clear that he was trying to record reflected light, stripping away the mental construct of the weight of mountains, for example. “Our eyes receive reflection . . . nothing else. We never see the object; we see the light it reflects. When I make art, I concern myself with the amount of reflection I perceive.”

At about 6 a.m., when the sun was not up but the horizon was lightening, I saw the interrelationships of the squares in one of Waldrum’s triptychs confirmed. Turtleback Mountain was black against a milky-beige sky and the foothills were charcoal, a slight limning setting off the fore-, middle, and back-grounds.

In another triptych I feel the same sensation as being steeped in the heated red earth under my feet and looking up at the blue twilit sky before the stars come out in an endless summer day, the mountains silhouetted nearly black but edged with a flickering light as the sun dies and the moon rises.

Waldrum’s seemingly abstract work may therefore be among the most concrete art possible, recreating the body’s sensation in a New Mexico landscape at distinct times of day and season.

This formal investigation of reflected light by Waldrum redefines the painted canvas, which is usually a window into an artist’s created pictorial space, usually using perspective. Just as Waldrum claimed, the paintings transport you into a much larger container.

For this formal pictorial discovery Waldrum should be lauded and people should be beating a path to Rio Bravo’s door.

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Sierra County Sun Staff assembles articles when no reporter is needed.
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Understanding New Mexico's proposed new social studies standards for K-12 students

“The primary purpose of social studies is to help young people develop the ability to make informed and reasoned decisions for the public good as citizens of a culturally diverse, democratic society in an interdependent world.”
—National Council for the Social Studies 

Reader Michael L. Hayes of Las Cruces commented: What impresses me is that both the proposed standards and some of the criticisms of them are equally grotesque. I make this bold statement on the basis of my experience as a peripatetic high school and college English teacher for 45 years in many states with many students differing in race, religion, gender and socioeconomic background, and as a civic activist (PTA) in public education (My career, however, was as an independent consultant mainly in defense, energy and the environment.)

The proposed social studies standards are conceptually and instructionally flawed. For starters, a “performance standard” is not a standard at all; it is a task. Asking someone to explain something is not unlike asking someone to water the lawn. Nothing measures the performance, but without a measure, there is no standard. The teacher’s subjective judgment will be all that matters, and almost anything will count as satisfying a “performance standard,” even just trying. Students will be left to wonder “what is on the teacher’s mind?” or “have I sucked up enough.”

Four other quick criticisms of the performance standards. One, they are nearly unintelligible because they are written in jargon. PED’s use of jargon in a document intended for the public is worrisome. Bureaucrats often use jargon to confuse or conceal something uninformed, wrong or unworthy. As a result, most parents, some school board members and more than a few teachers do not understand them.

Two, the performance standards are so vague that they fail to define the education which teachers are supposed to teach, students are supposed to learn, and parents are supposed to understand. PED does not define words like “explain” or “describe” so that teachers can apply “standards” consistently and fairly. The standards do not indicate what teachers are supposed to know in order to teach or specify what students are supposed to learn. Supervisors cannot know whether teachers are teaching social studies well or poorly. The standards are so vague that the public, especially parents or guardians, cannot know the content of public education.

Three, many performance standards are simply unrealistic, especially at grade level. Under “Ethnic, Cultural and Identity Performance Standards”; then under “Diversity and Identity”; then under “Kindergarten,” one such standard is: “Identify how their family does things both the same as and different from how other people do things.” Do six-year-olds know how other people do things? Do they know whether these things are relevant to diversity and identity? Or another standard: “Describe their family history, culture, and past to current contributions of people in their main identity groups.” (A proficient writer would have hyphenated the compound adjective to avoid confusing the reader.) Do six-year-olds know so much about these things in relation to their “identity group”? Since teachers obviously do not teach them about these other people and have not taught them about these groups, why are these and similar items in the curriculum; or do teachers assign them to go home and collect this information?

Point four follows from “three”; some information relevant to some performance measures requires a disclosure of personal or family matters. The younger the students, the easier it is for teachers to invade their privacy and not only their privacy, but also the privacy of their parents or guardians, or neighbors, who may never be aware of these disclosures or not become aware of them until afterward. PED has no right to design a curriculum which requires teachers to ask students for information about themselves, parents or guardians, or neighbors, or puts teachers on the spot if the disclosures reveal criminal conduct. (Bill says Jeff’s father plays games in bed with his daughter. Lila says Angelo’s mother gives herself shots in the arm.) Since teacher-student communications have no legal protection to ensure privacy, those disclosures may become public accidentally or deliberately. The effect of these proposal standards is to turn New Mexico schools and teachers into investigative agents of the state and students into little informants or spies.

This PED proposal for social studies standards is a travesty of education despite its appeals to purportedly enlightened principles. It constitutes a clear and present danger to individual liberty and civil liberties. It should be repudiated; its development, investigated; its PED perpetrators, dismissed. No state curriculum should encourage or require the disclosure of private personal information.

I am equally outraged by the comments of some of T or C’s school board members: Christine LaFont and Julianne Stroup, two white Christian women, who belong to one of the larger minorities in America and assume white and Christian privileges. In different terms but for essentially the same reason, both oppose an education which includes lessons about historical events and trends, and social movements and developments, of other minorities. They object to the proposal for the new social studies standards because of its emphasis on individual and group identities not white or Christian. I am not going to reply with specific objections; they are too numerous and too pointed.

Ms. LaFont urges: “It’s better to address what’s similar with all Americans. It’s not good to differentiate.” Ms. Stroup adds: “Our country is not a racist country. We have to teach to respect each other. We have civil rights laws that protect everyone from discrimination. We need to teach civics, love and respect. We need to teach how to be color blind.”

Their desires for unity and homogeneity, and for mutual respect, are a contradiction and an impossibility. Aside from a shared citizenship, which implies acceptance of the Constitution, the rule of law and equality under the law, little else defines Americans. We are additionally defined by our race, religion, national origin, etc. So mutual respect requires individuals to respect others different from themselves. Disrespect desires blacks, Jews or Palestinians to assimilate or to suppress or conceal racial, religious or national origin aspects of their identity. The only people who want erasure of nonwhite, non-Christian, non-American origin aspects of identity are bigots. Ms. LaFont and Ms. Stroud want standards which, by stressing similarities and eliding differences, desire the erasure of such aspects. What they want will result in a social studies curriculum that enables white, Christian, native-born children to grow up to be bigots and all others to be their victims. This would be the academic equivalent of ethnic cleansing.

H.E.L.P.

This postmortem of a case involving a 75-year-old women who went missing from her home in Hillsboro last September sheds light on the bounds of law enforcement’s capacity to respond, especially in large rural jurisdictions such as Sierra County, and underscores the critical role the public, as well as concerned family and friends, can play in assisting a missing person’s search.

Reader Jane Debrott of Hillsboro commented: Thank you for your article on the tragic loss of Betsey. I am a resident of Hillsboro, a friend of Rick and Betsey, and a member of H.E.L.P. The thing that most distresses me now, is the emphasis on Rick’s mis-naming of the color of their car. I fear that this fact will cause Rick to feel that if he had only gotten the facts right, Betsey may have been rescued before it was too late. The incident was a series of unavoidable events, out of everyone’s control, and we will never know what place the correct color of her car may have had in the outcome. It breaks my heart to think that Rick has had one more thing added to his “what ifs” concerning this incident.

Diana Tittle responded: Dear Jane, the Sun undertook this investigation at the request of a Hillsboro resident concerned about the town’s inability to mount a prompt, coordinated response to the disappearance of a neighbor. From the beginning, I shared your concern about how our findings might affect Betsy’s family and friends. After I completed my research and began writing, I weighed each detail I eventually chose to include against my desire to cause no pain and the public’s right to know about the strengths and limitations of law enforcement’s response and the public’s need to know about how to be of meaningful assistance.

There was information I withheld about the state police investigation and the recovery. But I decided to include the issue of the car’s color because the individuals who spotted Betsy’s car emphasized how its color had been key to their identification of it as the vehicle described in Betsy’s Silver Alert. Because the misinformation was corrected within a couple of hours, I also included in this story the following editorial comment meant to put the error in perspective: “The fact that law enforcement throughout the state was on the lookout in the crucial early hours after Betsy’s disappearance for an elderly woman driving a “light blue” instead of a “silver” Accord would, in retrospect, likely not have changed the outcome of the search” [emphasis added].

I would also point to the story’s overarching conclusion about the inadvisability of assigning blame for what happened: “In this case, a perfect storm of unfortunate circumstances, many of them beyond human control, hindered the search that it would fall to Hamilton’s department to lead.”

It is my hope that any pain caused by my reporting will eventually be outweighed by its contribution to a better community understanding of what it will take in the future to mount a successful missing person’s search in rural Sierra County.

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