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Essential West Magazine
Exploring Art, Literature, History, Museums, Lifestyle, and Cultures of the West
It amazes me that four letters - W-E-S-T - have the ability to evoke an instantaneous emotional image. Simply the act of reading these four letters has caused you to form a narrative of your west.
Can the West be distilled to its essence - a simple direction or region? I believe not; it is a deeper dive of consciousness. How America sees itself and the world defines us. Diverse cultures, strong individualism, open spaces, and raw natural beauty marinated in a roughshod history have formed this region’s unique milieu.
Our online magazine’s primary focus is to feature relevant topics in art, literature, history, museums, lifestyle, and culture; lofty goals for any publication. No single magazine can be the beckon of all things western; it is a diverse, evolving paradigm that cannot be pigeonholed. As the publisher, I hope to be the buffalo that grazes the wide expanse of western sensibility and relay to you a glimpse of how I perceive our Essential West.
- Mark Sublette
Featured Article
Jody Folwell: Pueblo Pottery Revolutionary
Pueblo pottery has no equivalent in white culture or society. To Pueblo people, their pottery is functional, artistic, decorative, familial, and spiritual. It is teacher, friend, relative, ancestor. Pueblo pots tell stories and sing. Pottery permeates the lives of Pueblo people. No separation exists between the clay–the earth–and the maker. The pot and the potter are not merely...
Sheila Nadimi Photographs of Student Murals Inside Intermountain Intertribal Indian School
When Sheila Nadimi moved to Logan, UT from Canada in 1991, the surroundings looked mostly familiar. Mountains, trees, churches, houses. One feature of the landscape, however, did not. “I saw those buildings, and they were not in my repertoire,” Nadimi remembers. “I'd never encountered architecture like that. They were also boarded up, so they were silent in a way.” “Those buildings” were the 27 structures comprising what was first the Bushnell Military Hospital before it was converted into the Intermountain Indian School opened in 1950. Originally populated solely by Diné (Navajo) children, in 1974, Intermountain began welcoming students from across...
A Contemporary Photographer's Response to Edward Weston
Two love stories separated by 80 years. Two photographers. Two models. Kelli Connell (b. 1974) brings them together during “Kelli Connell: Pictures for Charis,” an exhibition on view at the Cleveland Museum of Art, where admission is free, through May 25, 2025. Charis (pronounced CARE-iss) is Charis Wilson (1914–2009). As is often the case for women in art history with famous partners, Wilson’s contributions as writer, model, champion, and right hand woman have generally been reduced to that of muse. Research Wilson online and nearly every story, including her obituary, which ran in The New York Times, the Los Angeles...
Ya La'ford's Abstract Vision of Western Landscapes
Two years stuck at home during the COVID 19 pandemic had artist Ya La’ford (b. 1979) itching to return to her life of travel. When Ogden Contemporary Arts in Ogden, UT, an exhibition space and non-profit arts advocacy organization, contacted her with an offer to visit and participate in its artist-in-residence program in 2022, she was all about it. Her husband, not so much. “Why would we ever go to Utah,” La’ford remembers him asking. “What's there to see and why would you live there?” La’ford is a first generation American of Jamaican descent born in the Bronx who lives...
Eric-Paul Riege 'Earrings for the Big Gods'
If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. Good news for Eric-Paul Riege (b. 1994, Na’nízhoozhí/Gallup, NM; Diné) whose first solo institutional exhibition in New York can be seen at Canal Projects in Tribeca now through March 29, 2025. Even before receiving validation from the Big Apple, Riege has been “making it,” establishing himself in the last couple years as one of the most in-demand contemporary Native American artists. He had an exhibition at the prestigious Hammer Museum in Los Angeles in 2023, the same year the National Gallery of Art acquired one of his pieces. His...
'Masters of Drawing' Exhibition at Medicine Man Gallery
Drawing represents the “dribbling and shooting” of art to use a sports metaphor. It’s the foundational skill upon which all others are built. You’d be hard pressed to find a great artist from history who wasn’t an exceptional draftsman – the fancy word for drawer. Or woman. No matter where their art making took them, be that abstraction or minimalism or even sculpture, the greats could all draw. Picasso was brilliant with pen and pencil as a teen. Brilliant. His ability to successfully go on and break all the rules of painting stemmed from his mastery of the basics of...
See America Through the Homes and Studios of its Greatest Artists
National parks checklists are so 2020. During and after the pandemic as Americans experiencing extended cabin fever were looking for wide open, safe, outdoor spaces to stretch their legs, they descended upon our national parks in crushing volume. Crowds, noise, trash, traffic jams. Circling for parking like at a mall the week before Christmas. National parks were popular tourist attractions before Covid, since, they’ve become overrun with visitors. Loved to death. Particularly the big western parks like Yellowstone, Glacier, Yosemite, Arches, and Grand Canyon. Guests now jockey for space with thousands of others. The most popular parks have had to...
Native Art and Artists Through the Lens of Jerry Jacka
Jerry Jacka (1934-2017) walked a tightrope few other photographers or artists are able to, that of a white man recording the Native world. He did so sensitively, authentically, accurately, and most importantly, with the blessing of the people he photographed, for more than 50 years. Born and raised on a ranch in New River, AZ, 35 miles north of downtown Phoenix, Jacka began winning awards for his pictures as a teenager. Everything about Arizona fascinated him from the landscapes to the trading posts, and especially, the region’s Indigenous people and their artwork. His fascination began by finding pottery shards around...
Newly Expanded Maynard Dixon Museum in Tucson Celebrates Artist's 150th Birthday
Mark Sublette was first bitten by the Maynard Dixon bug in late 1995, early 1996 when a Dixon painting came into his Tucson gallery. “I just fell in love with it, and I said at that moment in time, ‘I'm always going to have Dixon in my gallery,’” Sublette remembers. He remembers the painting, too: Late Light on the Catalinas, 1943, 16 x 20. Sublette recites the details with the speed and certainty of a father recalling a child’s birthday and weight. Sublette bought the painting, then sold it, then bought it back. “The Catalina Mountains. It was just the...
T.C. Cannon, Bob Dylan, Allan Houser, and Henry Moore
The first week of 2025 brought me the discovery of two artistic inspirations I was previously unaware of featuring two of my favorite artists: T.C. Cannon (1946-1978; Kiowa/Caddo) and Allan Houser (1914-1994; Chiricahua Apache). Surprisingly, it was not Cannon and Houser – arguably the most influential Native American painter and, inarguably, the most prominent Native American sculptor, respectively – doing the influencing. Instead, they were the ones being influenced. Influenced by white artists from the mainstream, Bob Dylan in the case of Cannon and Henry Moore (1898-1986) in the case of Houser. Everyone knows who Bob Dylan is; Brit Henry...