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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...
Julia Arriola debuts new series of ledger drawings focusing on pow wows and fairs
The Ledger Drawings of Julia Arriola Walking into an antique shop in Fredricksburg, TX, Tucson native Julia Arriola (b. 1952; Mescalero/Mayo) didn’t expect to walk out as a ledger artist. She didn’t. That would come later, following her 20-year career as a curator at the Arizona Historical Society. What she did walk out of that shop with, however, was an 1869 ledger book dug out of a storage room and acquired for $10 which would ultimately send her down the path of ledger drawing. Names and numbers. Things bought and sold. Mostly by men although a few by...
Gerald Clarke mural "Cahuilla Realms" debuts at Agua Caliente Resort Casino Spa in Rancho Mirage, CA
Gerald Clarke with mural courtesy of Agua Caliente Resort Casino Spa For Gerald Clarke’s latest major commission, where he’s painting is as important to the artist as what he’s painting. The Agua Caliente Resort Casino Spa in Rancho Mirage, CA may not seem to equal the prestige of a museum for showing his work, but to Clarke, an enrolled member of the Cahuilla Band of Indians who currently lives on the Cahuilla Indian Reservation in Southern California, the location’s accessibility to his community makes up for its lack of shushing docents and marble columns. “To be able to...
Birger Sandzen's 'A Mountain Symphony' takes pride of place in Denver Art Museum's Western American Art galleries
Birger Sandzen - A Mountain Symphony (Longs Peak, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado), 1927, oil on canvas Visitors to the Denver Museum of Art’s Western American Art galleries are greeted by a painting of such mindboggling beauty as to defy ordinary aesthetic descriptions. In Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet,” Romeo was so stricken by Juliet’s appearance that the limitations of physical characterization wouldn’t suffice in describing her. Romeo, instead, compared her to a summer’s day – “thou art more lovely and more temperate.” So it goes with Birger Sandzen’s A Mountain Symphony (Longs Peak, Rocky Mountain National Park, Colorado),...
Native American art and history as told through the Abeyta Family
Elizabeth Abeyta, 1955–2006 (Navajo), Untitled (Trickster), 1984. Clay, paint, leather, turquoise, silver, shell, beads. Private Collection. Photography by Addison Doty To pull at the threads of the Abeyta family of artmakers – father Narciso, daughters Pablita and Elizabeth, and the baby of the family, son Tony – reveals an astonishingly thorough history of not only Diné (Navajo) people through the 20th century into today, but also modern and contemporary Native American art broadly. One family as representative of thousands. The traumas and the triumphs. That premise inspired Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe Chief Curator...
The Abeyta you know, and those you don't, on view together at Wheelwright Museum
Tony Abeyta, 2021. Photo by Larry Price Anyone even a little bit interested in Western art or Native American art should be familiar with the name Tony Abeyta. No museum or important private collection of the material can be considered complete without him. The names Narciso Abeyta (1918–1998), Pablita Abeyta (1953–2017) and Elizabeth Abeyta (1955–2006) are less familiar among aficionados, if not totally unknown. The four family members – father, daughters and son – come together at the Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe for the exhibition “Abeyta | To’Hajiilee K’é,” on view through January...
Unprecedented year of Indigenous cultural celebrations united as Indigenous Celebration 2022
SWAIA Santa Fe Indian Market 2021 © Shayla Blatchford for SWAIA The Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian in Santa Fe was the location for a March 3, 2022, press conference announcing the most ambitious project ever initiated to promote Indigenous artwork from across the United States and Canada. The program is known as Indigenous Celebration New Mexico 2022 – IC22 for short. This unparalleled collaboration brings together 44 New Mexico cultural institutions, longstanding annual events, nonprofits, government departments, private art businesses and supporting partners from many industries. All IC22 partners envision making New Mexico known internationally as...
Make the most of your next vacation with tips from 'Wanderess'
Nikki Vargas, Author of “Wanderess: The Unearth Women Guide to Traveling Smart, Safe, and Solo” | Photo Courtesy of Nikki Vargas The West must be experienced to be fully appreciated. All the Western artwork, books, TV shows and movies produced over the last 100 years don’t compare to seeing a wolf pack chase an elk in Hayden Valley. The expansive view from a hilltop in San Francisco looking out over the Bay from left to right with the open ocean, Golden Gate Bridge, Tiburon and Sausalito, Alcatraz and the TransAmerica Pyramid imprinting on your mind. The green of...
Heard Museum Guild Indian Fair & Market returns in March with in-person event
Monte Yellowbird | Photo Credit Haute Photography After nearly two years of COVID cancellations, starts, stops, postponements, virtual and then limited capacity events, Frieze Los Angles – the largest contemporary art fair on the West Coast and one of the largest in the world – held February 17-20, 2022, felt to the broader art world like the first “post-pandemic” art fair. The pandemic is ongoing, of course, but to attendees and media, Frieze had a “before times” normalcy, with its focus on the art, not the virus. The fair featured masks and precautions. It did not feature preoccupation....
Cézanne, Renoir and Southwest Native Art at Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia
By Chadd Scott Storage Jar, Acoma Pueblo, c. 1900. Fired clay. 15 34 × 17 34 in. (40 × 45.1 cm). The Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia, A383 Dr. Albert C. Barnes (1872–1951) stands as one of the most visionary, prolific and eclectic art collectors in American history. He’s best known for assembling one of the world’s most important private collections of Impressionist, Post-impressionist, and Modern paintings. The Barnes Foundation, which he chartered in 1922 to teach people from all walks of life how to look at art and which continues his work today, holds the largest collection of paintings...
Trends connecting artists from Pacific Northwest identified in new exhibition
Joe Feddersen - Drizzle, 2018 | Monotype, spray paint, and staples | 24 x 17.5 inches | Courtesy of the artist and Froelick Gallery, Portland Within the broader “West,” the Pacific Northwest has a feeling all its own. The climate, the landscape, the people, the attitudes. The art. Artists and art making in the region became a specific fascination for curator and writer Melissa Feldman when she was based in Seattle between 2012 and 2019. Her observations have culminated in the first exhibition identifying a regional artistic trend in the Pacific Northwest, one grounded in folk and craft...