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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
Montana's Remote Glaciers Through the Drawings of Jonathan Marquis
Jonathan Marquis fell in love with Montana before even moving there in 2003 to finish college. It didn’t take long – backpacking and mountain climbing around the state – to know it was true love. “When I climbed one of my first peaks and had this incredible 100-mile view, something really clicked and I knew that this is...
For the first time since 1992, a Western may attempt a high-profile coup for the best picture Oscar
By Guest Writer Michael Clawson With movie theaters shuttered, studios pushing and then re-pushing opening dates and an increasing number of movies foregoing theatrical releases in favor of streaming platforms, it’s safe to say there has not been a year at the movies quite like 2020. But one of the highlights from this disaster of a summer is Kelly Reichardt’s First Cow, a film that has silently and with little fanfare, slipped into the running for best picture at next year’s Academy Award. Reichardt’s seventh feature film is about two on-the-run travelers in Oregon territory...
First Americans Museum in Oklahoma City preparing to open in September 2021
First Americans Museum Under Construction When the First Americans Museum opens in Oklahoma City in September of this year, it will represent the culmination of more than 20 years of planning, fundraising, waiting, construction and imagining what it would mean for Native people to tell their own story on their own terms. That seems like a long time. It is a long time. Contrasted against the story of Native people in Oklahoma, however, it’s, but a moment. The five tribes indigenous to the area that is now the state of Oklahoma were thriving there centuries before contact with...
Non-fungible tokens and blockchain technology are changing the way we buy and sell works of art
You have surely read or heard something recently about “NFTs,” “non-fungible tokens.” An artist with two million Instagram followers and no presence in the traditional gallery/museum world, who goes by the name Beeple, sold an NFT artwork through the Christie’s auction house for $69.3 million earlier in March of 2021. The sale represented global news covered by almost every major media outlet. It made Beeple the third most expensive living artist behind only Jeff Koons and David Hockney. So, what the heck are “NFTs?” Non-fungible tokens are “cryptographic assets on blockchain with unique identification codes and metadata that...
What Zane Grey did with words in the early 20th century, Ed Mell has been doing with paint for the past 40 years.
"Riders of the Purple Sage" by Arizona Opera Both Zane Grey and Ed Mell are storytellers. Both capture a mythic West. A West of fantastic grandeur and possibility. They do so in a colorful, lyrical, romantic style. Arizona provides deep connective tissue between the two. Mell was born and raised in Arizona. He’s spent most of his life there. Grey spent the majority of his life “back East,” but visited Arizona regularly between 1918 and 1929. (Oddly enough, a dispute over bear hunting season with local officials in 1929 led him to vow never to return to the...
Calling back to his career as an illustrator, Dennis Ziemienski pays tribute to the Southwest with his newest work
By Michael Clawson, guest writer Click or Tap Here to See Dennis Ziemienski's Available Works Dennis Ziemienski "Desert Evening Ride" | Oil on Canvas | 48" x 36" Sitting in front of his easel in Northern California, Dennis Ziemienski is craving travel. Especially as he dabs at his newest works, which are throwbacks to old travel posters, complete with bold lettering announcing places like Monument Valley, Saguaro National Park and “Explore the Grand Canyon.” But, of course, travel is a luxury these days. A luxury that was easily taken for granted before 2020, when the pandemic swept...
Travel Back In Time To The Indian Congress Of 1898 Via Wendy Red Star At Joslyn Art Museum In Omaha
Wendy Red Star (Apsáalooke, born 1981), The Indian Congress, 2021, mixed media installation. Photo Credit: Peter Fankhauser “Immersive” has become the buzzword when presenting museum exhibitions to the point of cliché. “Immersive” now describes anything big and crowded with lots of stuff. “Immersive” in 2021 includes video projections, audio soundtracks and other various technological advances which often seem to serve no other purpose than to qualify the exhibition as “immersive” for promotional materials. “Immersive” washes over visitors with light and sound and scale and spectacle, but does it reach them inside? Does the feast for the eyes also serve as feast...
Eighteen of Jill Carver's Southwestern landscapes on display at Medicine Man Gallery for "Ancient Landscapes: A Visual Journal"
Click or Tap Here to See Jill Carver's Available Works Jill Carver "Cathedral Wash" | Oil on Canvas | 12" x 24" Jill Carver doesn’t remember her first time seeing a picture of the Desert Southwest. She is from London. England. Her becoming one of the most critically acclaimed Western landscape painters having grown up with foggy London Bridge and Big Ben as the visual backdrop for her memories, not brilliant sunshine over saguaro cactus and mesas, is remarkable. “I think I was aware of Maynard Dixon, but I have no idea where that would have been,...
Landscape painter Jeff Aeling's "inventions" on view in an exhibition of new work at Medicine Man Gallery
Jeff Aeling "Twilight Cumulus, S. Park, CO." | Oil on Panel | 24" x 36" Collectors will recognize Jeff Aeling’s new work straight away. Expansive skies. Towering clouds. Colorado landscapes composed with scant foreground giving the space above room to breathe. An important distinction exists, however, in his latest exhibition of 14 small-scale paintings opening February 26th at Medicine Man Gallery. “Unusual for this show, there are a few pieces that are invented, paintings that I put together out of my head because I have such a familiarity with the places,” Aeling said. “I’m doing that more....
Maynard Dixon's Depression-era Works
By Dr. Mark Sublette Shapes of Fear, Allegory, Earthknower, Pickets, and Scabs were just a few of the great works painted by Maynard Dixon during a time of great social unrest, change and struggle in the United States. The great depression, Maritime strikes, and a flood of migrants to California were just some of the defining elements that made up America’s 1930s. Maynard Dixon, like most artists in America, struggled to make ends meet. Maynard may have struggled financially but he thrived as a painter creating some of his greatest works during the 1930s. Although Dixon’s painting log showed he executed 282 pieces between...
New Mexico artist Gustave Baumann's color prints on exhibit at the Cleveland Museum of Art
Gustave Baumann (1881-1971) - Deer Hunt | Woodblock Print | 6.5'' x 39.5'' | c. 1940 In one way – as a brilliant artist – Gustave Baumann differs greatly from the millions of people who have enjoyed the artwork he created over 50 years living in Santa Fe. In another way – as someone who visited New Mexico from the Midwest, fell in love with the area and moved there – his story mirrors many of his admirers who would subsequently make the same decision through the decades. Countless others dreamed of doing so, but never did. Baumann’s...