Gallery Events And News
- Featured Artists
- Event Calendar
- Artist Biographies
- News & Press
- Educational Videos
- Podcast
- Essential West
- Learn
Learn about the latest Medicine Man Gallery happenings; all about our artist, see our educational videos about native American art and fine art, watch podcasts with your favorite artists and check out art and history-related links we think you'll enjoy.
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...
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...
Taliesin West, Desert Botanical Garden present "Chihuly in the Desert"
Dale Chihuly - Desert Fiori, 2021 |Desert Botanical Garden, Phoenix |© 2021 Chihuly Studio. All rights reserved. Photo by Nathaniel Willson Two of the Phoenix area’s most stunning backdrops augment their visual delights with the exhibition of new works from famed studio glass artist Dale Chihuly. Taking place at Desert Botanical Garden and Frank Lloyd Wright’s Taliesin West, “Chihuly in The Desert” showcases installations across multiple settings – inside the buildings, on the lawns, in the water and emerging from the desert itself. Chihuly’s installations harmonize with the beauty and diversity of the locations, showcasing a remarkable intersection...
Stephen Datz retraces artistic footsteps in new exhibition "New Perspectives: The Landscapes of Stephen Datz
Stephen Datz 'Coffee with the Gossips' |30" x 60" | Oil Stephen Datz has been here before. Echo Park inside Dinosaur National Monument. Colorado National Monument and the Book Cliffs area near the artist’s home in Grand Junction. Arches National Park. Escalante, Utah. He previously saw these places through the eyes of a young man, figuring out his way in the world and what the artwork that would take him through it should look like. In his latest exhibition of new paintings on view at Medicine Man Gallery beginning January 22, collectors will find Datz, now 25...
Lessons on life and art from Western landscape painter Stephen Datz
You can learn a lot from an artist. Sure, the artistic life of freedom, risk and inspiration appears completely separate from the 9-to-5, workaday existence of most collectors. Their unapproachable talent and our reverence for it tends to make them seem likewise unapproachable. While some artists do exist on totally different planes of existence – it’s doubtful many people ever found Andy Warhol particularly relatable – most are more like the rest of us than we think. Take Stephen Datz for instance. During a recent conversation in advance of his upcoming show of new work at Medicine Man Gallery,...