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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
Art and Heartbreak in Taos, NM
There are heartbreaks. Teenage heartbreaks. First love heartbreaks. The kind of heartbreaks everyone should experience as essential to the human condition. The kind you get over. And then there are heartbreaks. Destroyers. Those that obliterate the soul. The kind you don’t always get over. I know both. On a recent visit to Taos, NM, I learned about a...
Into Old Growth Forest with Photographer Mitch Epstein
Everything’s connected for photographer Mitch Epstein (b. 1952). In his work, anyway. One thing always leads to the next, typically without premeditation. That explains how his last series of photographs centering resistance movements across America – “Property Rights” – led him into his most recent series of pictures, “Old Growth,” highlighting America’s old growth forests. “’Property Rights’ encouraged me to think further about what North America was like pre-colonization,” Epstein said. “That, in part, was instigated by spending time at national monument sites under threat during the Trump administration – we had Ryan Zinke as Interior Secretary. After going to...
Beauty and Significance of Native Fashion Spotlighted in New Exhibition
The Spencer Museum of Art at the University of Kansas in Lawrence shares the beauty and significance of Native fashion in a new exhibition by that same name. “Native Fashion” explores the diversity and ingenuity of wearable artworks produced by Native people from the 19th century into today. On view are traditional garments, contemporary couture and streetwear, and an expansive array of accessories, including jewelry, bags, and other adornments. “’Native Fashion’ offers our audiences a compelling opportunity to explore fashion as both core to Native identity and as a living art that continues to have meaning and impact to tribal...
Pendleton Round-Up brings thousands of visitors - and art - to eastern Oregon
Never be afraid to send an email. Roberta Lavadour, Executive Director at the Pendleton Center for the Arts in Pendleton, OR, wasn’t. She was on the Jordan D. Schnitzer Family Foundation’s email list to receive updates regarding news and events along with, presumably, hundreds of others. “After viewing one in 2016, I typed up a request for information on how we could start a conversation about borrowing prints,” Lavadour remembers. “I hit ‘reply’ thinking it would land in the inbox of a communications staffer. Less than two minutes later our phone rang and it was Jordan thanking me for reaching...
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...