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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
Mother and Daughter Nora and Eliza Naranjo Morse in Creative Harmony
Nora Naranjo Morse (b. 1953) and her daughter Eliza (b. 1980) have been collaborating as artists since the younger could walk, talk, and hold a pencil. “Eliza was four and I was traveling through Denmark and Germany, and I remember playing ‘Pass It’ with her,” Nora Naranjo Morse recalls. “It was basically a piece of paper and pencil....
National Museum of Wildlife Art's "Western Visions" art show and sale returning to Jackson, WY this September
NMWA at Sunrise, courtesy National Museum of Wildlife Art The National Museum of Wildlife Art’s “Western Visions” art show and sale has become a highlight on the Western art circuit since debuting 34 years ago. The Jackson, Wyoming-based museum has announced that the show will return to an in-person event this fall. For the past 10 years, more often than not, John Potter (Ojibwe) has submitted a painting to “Western Visions.” He will do so again this year, the invitation to do so, he considers an honor. “I'm a huge fan of that museum; back when I was...
Cheyenne warrior drawings share stories of freedom, captivity
Nock-ko-ist, also known as James Bear's Heart, Cheyenne, 'Buffalo Hunt,' colored pencil on paper.Arthur and Shifra Silberman Collection National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum Traumas of Native American removal from the East to the West by the federal government in the 19th century are well known. Everyone has heard of the Trail of Tears. Far less well known are the examples of Native Americans removed from the West and sent East. One of those stories is being told now – from the Native perspective – at the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens in Jacksonville, Florida. Why Jacksonville?...
Yellowstone? Meh. Yosemite? Yuck. Glacier? Zero out of five stars.
Amber Share, Subpar Parks, Zion National Park. Courtesy of Penguin Random House The splendor of America's national parks have been trumpeted in countless books, paintings and social media posts. They've been called "America's Best Idea." Filmmaker Ken Burns spent 12 hours reveling in their magnificence for a PBS documentary. Not everyone is so impressed. “Nothing to see,” a disgruntled visitor to Glacier National Park posted in an online review. “Just a big rock,” another wrote of Wyoming’s Devil’s Tower National Monument. Amber Share hilariously pairs these critiques – actual 1-star online reviews for national parks – with her...
'Many Wests' reveals a region beyond its narrow mythology
Roger Shimomura, American Infamy #2, 2006, acrylic on canvas, 72 x 120 in., Boise Art Museum Permanent Collection, Purchased with donations to the Roger Shimomura Acquisitions Fund Heroism. Rugged individualism. American exceptionalism. Cowboys and desperadoes. Cattle drives and gunfights. Big mountains. Big sunsets. Gold, silver and copper. Risks taken; fortunes made. A new exhibition jointly organized by the Smithsonian American Art Museum confronts popular myths of the American West promoted by the nation’s dominant, white, heteropatriarchal culture, widening the angle on the region, its history and inhabitants. “Many Wests: Artists Shape an American Idea” highlights artists who identify...
A Stroll Through Whitefish, Montana's Art Galleries
Most of the hundreds of thousands of tourists who visit Whitefish, Montana annually do so for the area’s abundant outdoor recreation with easy access to Glacier National Park. When all that hiking, skiing or whitewater rafting leaves visitors too pooped for another day outdoors under the Big Sky, a stroll around the town’s galleries proves wildly more fulfilling than might be expected from the small town of 7,700 residents. While not Jackson Hole or Aspen – yet – the art scene here punches well above its weight. Nancy Cawdrey 'Where the River Runs' Cawdrey Gallery Gallery namesake Nancy...
Pageant of the Masters returning to Laguna Beach following 2020 postponement
Pageant of the Masters / Festival of Arts Entrance “Unique” has become a greatly overused word. Inaccurately used, also. Events are described as “so unique” and “very unique.” Experiences promoted as “really unique” or “truly unique.” Something is either unique – one of a kind – or it is not, and most are not. The Pageant of the Masters is unique. After a one-year COVID-19 absence, The Pageant of the Masters returns to Laguna Beach, California July 7 – September 3. The nightly performance features elaborate set designs and costumed actors portraying figures in famous...
Highlights of Tulsa, Oklahoma's Philbrook and Gilcrease museums
Allan Houser, Prayer, 1994, Bronze, Philbrook Museum of Art (Left) Allan Houser, Sacred Rain Arrow, bronze. Gilcrease Museum (Right) The riches of old oil and gas money have provided Tulsa with numerous amenities beyond what’s typical for a city of 400,000 residents. Two of the best are its art museums: The Philbrook Museum of Arts and the Gilcrease Museum. Their collections and programming would be esteemed in cities 10 times this size. A pair of sculptures, along with their location, unite the institutions. A pair of paintings highlight them. Allan Houser Allan Houser (Chiricahua Apache, 1914-1994)...
Experience contemporary Native American Culture this summer in Rapid City, South Dakota
Crazy Horse Laser Light Show. PHOTO: Crazy Horse Memorial For collectors of Native American art, make this the summer you take your interest from observation to experience. Doing so serves as the best reminder that Native people in America are not an anachronism, locked away in time through painting and sculpture. Native people and Native cultures are contemporary, vibrant, continual. See this first-hand in and around Rapid City, South Dakota, beginning at the Crazy Horse Memorial 40 miles southwest of town in the striking Black Hills. The Crazy Horse Memorial is the world’s largest mountain carving in progress–an...
Agnes Pelton Returns To The Desert At Palm Springs Art Museum
Agnes Pelton, The Ray Serene, 1925. Oil on canvas. Collection of Lynda and Stewart Resnick. PHOTO: JAIRO RAMIREZ. Agnes Pelton’s artwork has returned to the desert. It was here where her singular artistic vision reached its peak. It was here where she spent the last 30 years of her life. It was here where her artwork was rediscovered–long after her death–and began receiving some small measure of the acclaim it is due. Fitting, then, that a widely-lauded, cross-country tour which has now recast early abstract painting with her as a central–not forgotten–figure, “Agnes Pelton: Desert Transcendentalist,” should culminate at the Palm...
An unlikely alliance and friendship: the lost pottery tiles of Awa Tsireh and Paul Saint-Gaudens
By Mark Sublette and Michael Horsley Nine tiles by Awa Tsireh (San Ildefonso) One of the most exciting moments in any art dealer's career is discovering new, important works of art. Usually, the find occurs in the form of a single unknown piece that is fresh to the market; however, on rare occasions when the stars align, the discovery can be in the form of a forgotten cache of artwork. If one is indeed fortunate, the find can also provide new insights into an artist's body of work and shed light by adding to their catalog raisonne; the...