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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

'Masters of Drawing' Exhibition at Medicine Man Gallery
Drawing represents the “dribbling and shooting” of art to use a sports metaphor. It’s the foundational skill upon which all others are built. You’d be hard pressed to find a great artist from history who wasn’t an exceptional draftsman – the fancy word for drawer. Or woman. No matter where their art making took them, be that abstraction...

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...

Take a sneak peek at the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture's all-new "Here, Now and Always" exhibition
Museum Hill with Museum of Indian Arts and Culture | Courtesy NM Department of Tourism When the Museum of Indian Arts and Culture in Santa Fe opened “Here, Now and Always” in 1997, the exhibition transformed the field. It was the first exhibition in the Southwest to work collaboratively with Indigenous people. It modeled a new way to interpret the lives and culture of Native peoples and set a new standard for Native representation in museums. The methodology would be copied by the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian and countless others around the nation. When MIAC’s...

Eiteljorg Museum hosting 30th annual Indian Market amid major changes inside the museum
Indian Market and Festival artist Alexa Rae Day, Anishinaabe Hochunk Lakota, shows her work to a market visitor in 2019 | Courtesy of the Artist The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art in Indianapolis celebrates a pair of milestones this month. On June 25 and 26, the 30th annual Eiteljorg Indian Market and Festival takes place, returning as an in-person event for the first time since 2019. Simultaneously, the museum debuts newly redesigned Native American Galleries following a $6 million overhaul six years in the making. The combination of events has no peer across the Midwest...

Three Asphalt Art Initiative projects being completed across the West this summer
Asphalt Art Initiative, Kansas City. Artwork by Tehya Riley, Parker Story, Alex Eickhoff, Stephanie Bloss-Foley | Photo courtesy of Bloomberg Philanthropies Street art’s ability to draw residents out of their homes to engage with neighbors, improve civic pride, bolster local businesses and enliven the places where it’s found are self-evident. From St. Petersburg, FL to Denver, public art has been used as a catalyst to revitalize urban areas. Outdoor art projects, installations, murals and the like are inexpensive and effective community energizing tools. Counterintuitive, however, is a public safety benefit of street art: decreased traffic accidents. That doesn’t...