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
T.C. Cannon, Bob Dylan, Allan Houser, and Henry Moore
The first week of 2025 brought me the discovery of two artistic inspirations I was previously unaware of featuring two of my favorite artists: T.C. Cannon (1946-1978; Kiowa/Caddo) and Allan Houser (1914-1994; Chiricahua Apache). Surprisingly, it was not Cannon and Houser – arguably the most influential Native American painter and, inarguably, the most prominent Native American sculptor, respectively...
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,...
Broadening Western history, and Western art, to include Asian American perspectives
Achieving a more comprehensive understanding of the American West will necessarily involve incorporating more stories and storytellers from Asian perspectives. Historic and contemporary artists should serve as key figures in doing so. Along these same lines, for Western art to remain relevant into the future beyond niche nostalgia for gunfights and cattle drives, forwarding Asian American artists into the genre should be a priority for every museum, gallery and collector. Imagine a diverse and robust contemporary Western art scene where Black, Mexican, Indigenous and Asian voices have equal representation to their white counterparts. In the words of John Lennon,...
Exhibition of National Geographic's best wildlife photography at National Museum of Wildlife Art
Photo by PAUL NICKLEN, Leopard Seal (Huge Female). From the exhibition "National Geographic: 50 Greatest Wildlife Photographs." Millions of tourists visit Yellowstone National Park each year hoping for a glimpse of a grizzly bear, a wolf, a moose. Capturing a photograph of these charismatic animals makes for the ultimate souvenir. Some visitors pull it off, many others don’t, all, however, can eat their hearts out at an exhibition of the world’s greatest wildlife photography in the shadow of Yellowstone at the National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson, WY which exhibits “National Geographic: 50 Greatest Wildlife Photographs” through...
Witte Museum in San Antonio correcting historic erasure of Black Cowboys
E. Smith (1886–1947) - African-American Cowboys with Their Mounts Saddled Up, Posed in Connection with a Fair in Bonham, Texas, in the Interest of Interracial Relations. | c. 1911-1915 | Nitrate negative | 5" x 7" By now, most everyone with an affinity for the history of the American West recognizes how contributions of Black people have been largely excluded from that history’s retelling. No surprise there. The extent of that erasure is surprising. For example, a full 25% of men who labored on the ranches of Texas and participated on cattle drives before the Civil War through...
Artist Patrick Martinez asks what has changed in 20 years since Rodney King beating
Patrick Martinez 'Look What You Created' Interior Wall| Nathan Lothrop/Tucson Museum of Art Patrick Martinez was 11-years-old when he, along with the rest of America, watched Rodney King viciously beaten on television by a pack of Los Angeles police officers in 1991. By that time, the cops who attacked King were beginning to reinforce a new narrative forming in popular culture about law enforcement. Growing up in the 80s, Martinez (b. Pasadena, CA, 1980) remembers police being presented to him as positive role models. Examples of civic pride. Cops would come to his school in suburban Los Angeles...