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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
The Native Artists Dominating Museum Presentations in 2024
Artnet surveyed special exhibitions currently on view at more than 200 U.S. art museums producing a list of the contemporary artists most in fashion nationwide. At institutions, anyway. The rankings do not consider galleries or the secondary market. The highly respected art world publication found nearly 3,500 names appearing in solo and group shows at big and small...
Serendipity adds depth, quality to Cowboy Museum 'Art of Northwest Coast' exhibition
Mark Henderson (Kwakwaka’wakw) - Eagle and Sisiuti, 1984, serigraph. Arthur and Shifra Silberman Collection| Courtesy National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum Eric Singleton must have been living right. In the midst of preparing an exhibition highlighting art of the Northwest Coast, the Curator of Ethnology at The National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City received a phone call out of the blue that would change the exhibition, and the museum. “A gentleman by the name of Nathan Walker, who's a biology professor at Oklahoma State University, said, ‘would you guys be interested in a donation; my...
Visiting Indian Market for the first time? Here are our tips
Sunday crowd at SWAIA Indian Market 2022| Photo by Chadd Scott One hundred years of Indian Market in Santa Fe and my first. I was invited by the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts to attend its annual gathering in 2022, the centennial celebration of the largest, oldest and most prestigious Indigenous arts market in the world. Among the tens of thousands attending the event, countless have been doing so for decades. Much like the artists themselves, they’ve made Indian Market an annual tradition. I hope to. Until I become an old salt at Market, and with the hope...
History of Native American Modern art traces roots back to Institute of American Indian Art
George Morrison, (Chippewa) - White Painting #1, 1965, oil, 50.5 x 50.5 | Courtesy IAIA Native Americans were producing Modern art prior to the Institute of American Indian Art opening in 1962. Leon Polk Smith (Cherokee) and George Morrison (Chippewa) were both living, working and exhibiting alongside the Abstract Expressionists in New York in the 1940s. Examples, however, are few and far between. IAIA represented the Big Bang of Native Modern art. The first generation of students and instructors through the 1960s and 70s departed from traditional aesthetics to boldly experiment with new themes. They challenged stereotypical expectations...
Secret Walls 'Support Your Local Artist Tour' pairs painting with competitive sports
Artists Miss Birdy, Monster Steve, Wagonways, and Phybr during SW X MLS Rivalry Week 2019, NYC | Credit Michael Millay Think of it as a visual rap battle. Doubles tennis meets painting. Support Your Local Artist North American Tour pits teams of two against each other in front of a blank 10-by-8-foot canvas and a raucous live crowd. Ninety minutes count down on a clock during which time each pair of artists must create an original, spontaneous composition using only markers, paint brushes, paint rollers and spray paint – all black. Two guest judges and a decibel reader...
Mateo Romero 'American Landscapes' at Medicine Man Gallery
Mateo Romero - Tsi Ping Owingeh #10, Oil, 48" x 60", c. 2022 Mateo Romero makes clear he is a Native American painter. He also makes clear that the direction his career has taken him increasingly distances his work from that genre. “I'm an American painter,” Romero said. “I am Cochiti Pueblo, I'm an enrolled tribal member, but the work is not self-consciously Native. It's not didactically Native. You don't have to know that I'm from Cochiti Pueblo to look at the paintings and to connect with the paintings and appreciate what the paintings are about. They are...
Will Wilson pacing the field of contemporary Indigenous photography
Will Wilson, Auto Immune Response #5, 2004 | Courtesy of the Artist I first came across the name of Diné (Navajo) photographer Will Wilson at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe. I was touring its reinstalled permanent exhibition “Here, Now and Always” where one of his photographs closes the show, so to speak, a final display item before visitor’s exit the presentation. I rightly assumed Wilson’s career must have been long established for his work to earn such a prominent spot, but I’d never heard of him before. Shows what I know! In 2007,...
Brad Kahlhamer sets up a swap meet inside Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art
Brad Kahlhamer ' Swap Meet' at Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art | Photo by William LeGoullon A hobby for some, a business for others, a lifestyle for few. Swap meets are simultaneously everything – everything being offered – and nothing – nothing anyone can’t part with. They are everywhere – found in every corner of the country – and nowhere – always portable, disposable, unfixed. Their presence is unknown to most, essential to others. Others. Swap meets have always belonged to the “others.” The outsiders, the overlooked, the marginal. No political party or special interest group advocates on...
"Diego Rivera's America" exhibit highlights the artist's connection to San Francisco
Diego Rivera, Still Life and Blossoming Almond Trees, 1931; Stern Hall, University of California, Berkeley, gift of Rosalie M. Stern; © 2022 Bancode México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, Mexico, D.F./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; photo:© The Regents of the University of California Diego Rivera’s (1886–1957) career will always be linked with San Francisco. It was in San Francisco where the Mexican titan of 20th century art painted his first murals in the United States. It was there where one of his most ambitious projects, Pan American Unity, was produced. The city proved important to...
Artistic roots of the Aloha Shirt examined at Washington State Historical Society
John Keoni Meigs, Island Feast, 1946, manufactured by Kamehameha; cotton, 35 x 35 x 24 inches © Keoni Collection They don’t make ‘em like they used to. In our disposable society, fast and easy has replaced quality and craftsmanship. Cheap labor and mass production eliminated skilled hands from the production of goods. Throw it away and buy another one. This modern American phenomenon defines electronics, furniture, textiles. Take as an example the Aloha shirt – the vibrantly colored button-down t-shirts inspired by the people, culture and flora of Hawaii. What passes for an Aloha shirt on the rack of...
'Subversion and Spectacle,' the artwork of Clark V. Fox on view in Houston
Mix the Washington Color School of painting with Pop art. Mix minimalism with pointillism. Mix Native American heritage with counter-culture progressive activism. Allow these influences to simmer over a 60-year career and serve in a whopper of an exhibition. More than 350 works from Clark V. Fox’ perpetually avant-garde career – pieces exploring and exploding themes related to American identity, history, society, politics and culture – can be seen now at the Station Museum of Contemporary Art in Houston, Fox’ home state. Born Michael Clark (Austin, TX; 1946), Fox spent the first five years of his life in Honolulu...