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DEC. 6: Harold Holden
Howdy folks, it’s the first week of December 2024 and welcome to This Week in The West.
I’m Seth Spillman, broadcasting from the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City.
On this podcast, we look share stories of the people and events that shaped the history, art and culture of the American West – and those still shaping it today.
There’s no monument to Harold Holden himself, but few men have made more monuments for others.
Today, we celebrate one of West’s great artists, Harold Holden, who died this week a year ago, on December 6, 2023.
He was called just “H” by his friends. A self-taught sculptor, he became the icon who created icons his home state of Oklahoma.
A Will Rogers sculpture at Will Rogers International Airport? It’s a Harold Holden. A Cowboy in Oklahoma City’s Stockyards City? Yes, that, too. The Broncho at the University of Central Oklahoma? The Bison at Oklahoma Baptist University? The Ranger at Northwestern Oklahoma University. Frank “Pistol Pete” Eaton at Oklahoma State University. All of the above. Done by H.
A native of Enid, Oklahoma, he was working the oil fields in Houston, Texas, when he happened to run into an instructor from the Texas Academy of Art. The teacher and subject matter piqued H’s interest; a few years later, he had an art degree.
He found work as a commercial artist and eventually became the art director at Horseman Magazine.
But at night, on his own time, he taught himself more about painting and sculpting. His focus was the West.
“What sparked me to become a Western artist was the subject matter, the lifestyle, the cowboy way,” H told The Oklahoman in a 2017 interview. “I knew everything about being a cowboy. I love all of it.”
H did a tour of duty in Vietnam and, upon his return, decided he couldn’t be a fine artist just in his spare time. He had to commit to it full-time.
He managed to get a few commissions. In 1987, he was chosen to sculpt a series of commemorative bronzes depicting the 165-year history of the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma and Kansas. He completed his first monument, “Boomer,” for his hometown of Enid. It depicts a full-size horse and rider in full gallop, wind blowing against the rider’s clothes and hat.
“The history of Oklahoma is unlimited,” H said in a 2015 interview. “You could spend all of your time just painting stories about that if you wanted to.”
H was honored with a Distinguished Alumni Award from Oklahoma State University in 2005, where he began his college career. OSU called on him in 2001 following the tragic plane crash, which took the lives of 10 members of the Cowboy basketball team.
In memory of those men, H created “We Will Remember,” a bronze sculpture of a cowboy kneeling down, hat in his hands. The memorial sits inside Gallagher-Iba Arena, near the entrances to the athletic department’s academic center and Heritage Hall, the arena’s hall of fame.
“The reason we chose this place is because many, many generations of students will pass in front of the memorial, as well as the many thousands who’ll visit Heritage Hall,” athletic director Terry Don Phillips said during the memorial’s dedication. “We just felt this was an opportunity as people pass by to have an opportunity to stop and reflect on the 10 wonderful people we have lost and their impact on our lives.”
Perhaps H’s most personal work was done a few years later.
In 2010, H was diagnosed with a fatal lung disease and given two weeks to live, forcing him to close his studio. But recovery came in the form of a lifesaving single lung transplant. As a thank you for the blessing of a new life, and in appreciation of his doctors, H created a monument entitled “Thank You Lord.”
The six-foot-tall sculpture shows a cowboy in a long coat, looking skyward, hat in hand over his heart.
“Throughout this journey, we tried to be strong in our faith, and this sculpture is simply our expression of just that, not only for us but for all of the gifts that the Lord provides: comfort, care, new life and hope,” H said about the inspiration for the work.
Castings of the work live in the garden at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Enid and the Nazih Zuhdi Transplant Center at Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City.
H was inducted into the Oklahoma Hall of Fame in 2014, the highest honor for a citizen of the state. In 2017, he became the first Oklahoma artist to be inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners here at our Museum.
H was honored many other times during Prix de West, our premier Western art exhibition. His sculpture of longtime museum patron Edward Gaylord stands in our west wing.
He was still preparing artwork for the exhibition last year before he died on Dec. 6, 2023.
Harold Holden was 83.
And with that we’ll call it a final casting of this episode of “This Week in The West.”
Our show is produced by Chase Spivey and written by Mike Koehler
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We leave you today with the words of our own President and CEO Pat Fitzgerald, who remembered Harold Holden this way: “As a rancher and horseman, H lived the life he so beautifully captured in his work. … Our museum, our state and the Western community have lost a true cowboy.”
Much obliged for listening and remember, come Find Your West here at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.
