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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
Indigenous Fire Practices Explored Through Art in Exhibition on View in Los Angeles
The deadly Eaton wildfire began on January 7, 2025, raging uncontrollably to consume chunks of Pasadena and Altadena. As it was dying out, “Fire Kinship: Southern California Native Ecology and Art” was opening – January 22 – at the Fowler Museum at UCLA 25 miles west. The exhibition offering insights into Indigenous fire stewardship, ecological resilience, and climate...
Tse Tsan: Santa Clara Surrealism for a New Century
Standing out at Santa Fe Indian Market takes some real doing. Here, 1,000 of the best artists in the world converge with their best work. Not 1,000 of the best Native artists, 1,000 of the best artists who happen to be Native. On view and for sale are a dizzying assortment of paintings, photography, jewelry, pottery, and objects of creativity and handicraft defying belief. An art lover could go to Indian Market with an 18-wheeler to fill and $1 million to spend and still be forced to make choices. Necrosis turned my head during the event’s Best of Show preview...
Art or Accident: The Grand Canyon Dragon Map?
It’s not an artwork. Not intentionally. But its line, color, and composition combine for a striking visual. The hand of man produced it, although forces vastly greater and older are responsible for its existence. The Grand Canyon Dragon Map. Can you see it? 'The Geologic Map of the Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona,' 1976. Courtesy of the Museum of Northern Arizona. From either end, the geologic features of the Grand Canyon as seen from above appear eerily reminiscent of a Chinese dragon’s head, tail, and spikey, serpentine body. Totally unintentionally. An exhibition at the Museum of Northern Arizona in Flagstaff...
T.C. Cannon's 'Self Portrait in Studio,' The Greatest Self-Portrait in American Art
The boots. The hat. The jeans. The bandana. That shirt! Brushes casually laid across his lap like an Old West gunfighter’s six-shooter. Discarded cigarette butts on the floor. You’ll have to get up close to see those. Aviator sunglasses. Everything about T.C. Cannon’s Self Portrait in the Studio (1975) is cool. More than cool, this is the finest self-portrait in American art history. T.C. Cannon, 'Self Portrait in the Studio,' 1975. Tia Collection. You can see it through December 1, 2024, at the Baltimore Museum of Art during its institution-wide “Preoccupied: Indigenizing the Museum” project, a 10 month Native art...
Tokio Ueyama and Colorado's Granada Relocation Center on View at Denver Art Museum
Anti-Japanese racism in America following the 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor by imperial Japan resulted in one of the nation’s most disgraceful chapters. Under the excuse of “national security,” roughly 120,000 Japanese Americans, 79,000 of them U.S. citizens, were identified by the government, given six days to put their affairs in order – sell houses, close businesses, contact family – collect what few possessions they could carry with them, then rounded up and sent to remote military zones, mostly across the West. Anyone at least 1/16th Japanese was taken. Officially termed “relocation centers,” the prisoners were held in concentration camps....
See a Color Recording of Maria Martinez Making Pottery from 1952
You’ve seen Maria Martinez pottery. Everyone has seen Maria Martinez pottery. But you’ve likely never seen Maria Martinez making pottery. An astounding film from 1952 shows just that. Watch it here. Over more than 20 minutes, Martinez is seen undertaking almost every part of her ceramics process at the San Ildefonso Pueblo. In color! This is likely the earliest, most extensive color recording of Martinez (1887–1980) making artwork. Each frame proves more remarkable than the last. Her colorful dress. Her big, beaming smile. The impossibly fine mixture of clay and volcanic ash which becomes her pottery. How swiftly her hands...
Stephen Shore's Unique Spin on Western Landscape Photography
Yes, they’re landscape photos. Yes, they’re from the West. Stephen Shore’s images of Montana, however, differ significantly from what is traditionally thought of as “Western landscape photography.” The genre of pictures birthed by Ansel Adams. The kind found in thousands of galleries from San Antonio to Seattle and everywhere in between over the past half century. Scenic. Grandiose. Nature as cathedral. Stephen Shore, 'Madison County, Montana, August 1, 2020. 45°36.161521N, 111°34.342823W.' Courtesy the artist and 303 Gallery. “(My photographs) are completely different from that perspective,” Shore (b. 1947) said. “I consider them landscape, but I consider them landscape that involves...
Intersect Aspen Art and Design Fair Returns with a Local Flavor
Galleries and collectors from around the world will descend upon Aspen, CO July 30 through August 3, 2024, for the annual Aspen Art Week. The Intersect Aspen Art and Design Fair again serves as one of the headlining attractions. New this year to the city’s signature modern and contemporary art fair is the addition of “design” to the event’s title, signifying the inclusion of top international contemporary design galleries to the mix of roughly 30 retailers from as far away as South Korea. A full calendar is planned for this year’s fair, formerly known as Art Aspen, including a VIP...
Vladem Contemporary Examines Closing Decades of 20th Century Art in New Mexico
New Mexico has been a destination for artists since before New Mexico was a state. Statehood arrived in 1912, long after Joseph Henry Sharp’s first came to Taos from “back East” in 1893. Five years later, Ernest Blumenschein and Bert Phillips made the journey. None expected to stay long. All did. Sharp, Blumenschein, and Phillis, along with E. Irving Couse, Oscar E. Berninghaus, and W. Herbert Dunton would form the Taos Society of Artists in 1915. Others would join them. Gustave Bauman moved to Santa Fe in 1918. Los Cinco Pintores followed, forming in 1921. Most famously, Georgia O’Keeffe began...
Benjamin Harjo Jr. and the Paradox of Success
Benjamin Harjo Jr’s success came at a cost to his legacy. What he made, people bought. All of it. All the time. Throughout a 50-plus year career. Art was more than a passion for him, it was a profession. How he fed his family. He faithfully attended Santa Fe Indian Market and Red Earth festival in Oklahoma City along with other select shows, cultivating a collector base that scarfed up his work. He paid his mortgage selling artworks, that was the point. Being so successful, he didn’t have to promote himself. He didn’t need a gallery to promote his work,...
Speed Art Museum in Louisville Presents Some of the Earliest Photos of the American West
They are among the earliest photographs of the West. Timothy O’Sullivan’s pictures of what would become Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah. Famous places: the Grand Canyon, Zuni Pueblo, Shoshone Falls, ID, Snake River, ID, Canyon de Chelly. O’Sullivan (born in Ireland, about 1840–1882) was part of an 1871 government-sponsored expedition lead by Lieutenant George Wheeler surveying and documenting the territories west of the 100th meridian, a longitudinal line running straight down the Great Plains from present day North Dakota to Texas. In his photographs, O’Sullivan created carefully constructed images conveying the ruggedness, vast scale, and the natural grandeur...