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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
Sheila Nadimi Photographs of Student Murals Inside Intermountain Intertribal Indian School
When Sheila Nadimi moved to Logan, UT from Canada in 1991, the surroundings looked mostly familiar. Mountains, trees, churches, houses. One feature of the landscape, however, did not. “I saw those buildings, and they were not in my repertoire,” Nadimi remembers. “I'd never encountered architecture like that. They were also boarded up, so they were silent in a...
Tanya Aguiñiga receives Heinz Award for the Arts for work along U.S.-Mexico border
Tanya Aguiñiga in her studio | Photo credit: Katie Levine To the people who live there, who cross it, when it bisects your life, the U.S./Mexico border and border wall are not abstractions. They aren’t lines on a map. They aren’t talking points. They are real. They are unforgiving. Tanya Aguiñiga’s humanitarian art practice personalizing the border wall, border region and, most importantly, the people living with these constructions along Tijuana, Mexico where she was raised has been recognized with a Heinz Awards for the Arts. The accolade, which she shares for 2021 with Sanford Biggers, includes an...
Social justice, 'survivance,' exhibition craft guide Denver Art Museum's reinstalled Indigenous Art Galleries
Installation image, 2016. Fritz Scholder (Luiseño), Massacre in America: Wounded Knee, 1972. Gift from Vicki and Kent Logan to the Collection of the Denver Art Museum. A massive, multi-year, $175 million upgrade to the Denver Art Museum campus featuring a total renovation of the eight-story Gio Ponti-designed Lanny and Sharon Martin Building (formerly referred to as the North or Ponti Building) opened to the public on October 24, 2021. The Martin Building restoration includes expanding gallery space and now offers visitor access to stunning city and mountain views. The transformed building – one of the few high-rise art...
Glenn Dean brings 20 New Paintings to Medicine Man Gallery in Tucson, AZ for 'Echoes from the West'
Glenn Dean 'Taos Drummer' | 40" x 40" | Oil on Linen Glenn Dean combines the familiar with the unexpected in an exhibition of new work, “Echoes From the West,” a solo show at Medicine Man Gallery in Tucson, AZ opening November 20. Familiar are images of a serene, vast Western landscape. Lone silhouetted cowboys look contemplatively into the expanse. New are his interpretations of Pueblo Indians. Here, the figure, not the landscape, takes preeminence. Dean returns to his time spent living in Santa Fe and personal experiences visiting the Pueblos for inspiration in these paintings. “The color...
Cutting-edge technology brings your voice into view at Canal Convergence in Scottsdale
What does a human voice look like? What does your voice look like? What does it look like projected as artwork? Answers to those questions can be found at Canal Convergence | Water + Art + Light festival in Scottsdale, Arizona November 5th through the 14th. MASARY Studios, in partnership with Scottsdale Arts and leveraging Epson Pro Series laser projectors, will install a monumental public artwork at the annual event allowing people to see their voices transformed and abstracted into animation projected on 50-foot sails suspended over the Arizona Canal. “Say What You Will” listens to what one says...
First Americans Museum Opens In Oklahoma City Telling 39 Stories Simultaneously
Exterior main entrance at First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City, OK When the First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma opened on September 18, 2021, it did so welcoming all. It welcomes Native Americans as family. It welcomes non-natives as guests. Both warmly, but there is a difference. Make no mistake, non-native visitors to the museum are guests. The invitation to explore is open, but they are not in charge. They are not telling the story. It’s not their space. That’s a dramatic change from the colonial history of institutional storytelling in America where for over 100 years...
A look inside the Chisholm Trail Heritage Center in Duncan, Oklahoma
Paul Moore "On the Chisholm Trail - Monument to the American Cowboy" c.1998, Monumental Bronze When south Texas ranch hands left to fight for the Confederacy in the Civil War, their free-roaming cattle stayed behind. Left to wander and reproduce without human interference, the famed Texas Longhorn didn’t become wild exactly, but even feistier – to put it mildly – than before. Their numbers swelled. Their range increased. Their value as a commodity, however, in sparsely populated south Texas in an age before refrigeration or widespread train networks, was low. Three dollars a head was all a rancher...
Step by Step
The art of Collecting Antique Navajo Weavings When I began collecting vintage Navajo blankets and rugs 30-plus years ago, there was no guidebook or database on buying or pricing a Navajo weaving, not to mention understanding how to verify authenticity.Of course, this was before the internet, and the only references were a few books, museum stores and dealers. Therefore, I needed to develop an objective set of criteria to help solidify a repeatable roadmap for every rug I purchased. Since beginning this journey,I have purchased thousands of antique Navajo blankets and rugs, and realized I repeatedly used the same...
Academy Museum of Motion Pictures Opens in Los Angeles
Aerial shot of the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. Copyright Academy Museum Foundation Hollywood’s latest blockbuster is the movies themselves. When the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures opened to the public on September 30, it did so following a proven script – so to speak. Big stars. The museum’s campaign committee featured Tom Hanks, Annette Bening and Disney Chairman Bob Iger. Hanks also sits on the museum’s Board of Trustees along with Laura Dern. Inside the seven-story, 300,000-square-foot museum at Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue in the heart of the Miracle Mile, public spaces are named after Sidney...
The Kinsey Collection at the Tacoma Art Museum exhibits a combination of artworks and artifacts related to Black history in America
Kinsey Collection Opening at Tacoma Art Museum | Photo by Amber Trillo Black History rarely features in America’s Western History. The Louisiana Purchase, Manifest Destiny, the Transcontinental Railroad, cattle drives, sod busters. Black faces are mostly absent from these stories. Not because they weren’t there. Black cowboys, doctors, farmers, artists and others from all walks of life played integral roles shaping the West’s history. They’ve been written out. The Tacoma Art Museum is working to correct that omission and using the Kinsey African American Art & History Collection to do so. The CollectionConsidered one of the most comprehensive...
Escape to midcentury modern in Palm Springs for Modernism Week Fall Preview
Mod Evening at Miralon Pool | Photo by Miralon Cadillac tail fins, the Rat Pack at the Sands, “Mad Men.” Midcentury modern has always been cool. Cool design and architecture. Cool parties. Cool fashion. Not always trendy, but always cool. The aesthetic, broadly referring to a period from the early 1930s to the mid-60s, reaching its apex in the 50s, feels as hip as ever with a full immersion in the movement available October 14-17 during Palm Springs’ Modernism Week Fall Preview. No place is as synonymous with midcentury modern as Palm Springs. That’s cool, too. The four...