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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...
Detroit Institute Of Arts Acquires Kathleen Wall's "Create Our Future - Honor Our Past," Ceramic Figures
Kathleen Wall’s, ‘Create Our Future—Honor Our Past,’ 2021. Ceramic. PHOTOGRAPH BY JASON S. ORDAZ, INSTITUTE OF AMERICAN INDIAN ARTS (IAIA) Headdresses. Horses. Teepees. When considering the country’s indigenous people, American popular culture loves smushing the hundreds of distinct tribes and nations which occupied the continent prior to European contact together. America wants a monolithic “Indian.” A “cowboys and Indians” Indian. A Western Indian. A Plains Indian shooting arrows at buffalo, wearing turquoise. Art history has done this prominently. Indigenous people occupying Florida’s thick brush and oppressive heat shown wearing large headdresses by Thomas Moran. Appeal to the Great...
'Yellowstone Revealed' Returning Indigenous People to Park on 150th Anniversary
DOI Secretary Deb Haaland Visit: Media availablity remarks with Mike Reynolds, Regional Director, and Cam Sholly, Superintendent | Photo Credit: NPS / Jacob W. Frank As the American Serengeti, Yellowstone National Park bustles with bison, elk and bear. No place on earth contains more geothermal features such as geysers, mudpots and thermal vents. Something is missing, though. People. Not the tourists who pack the park each summer to admire those animals and Old Faithful, but the park’s Indigenous inhabitants whose persons and history have been scrubbed from both the land at Yellowstone and the storytelling around it. Shane...
'Jules Tavernier and the Elem Pomo' at the MET in NYC explores the intercultural exchange between Tavernier (1844-1889) and the Indigenous Pomo community of Elem
Jules Tavernier, Dance in a Subterranean Roundhouse at Clear Lake, California, 1878. Oil on canvas, 48 × 72 1/4 inches. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, acquired through the Marguerite and Frank A. Cosgrove Jr. Fund, 2016. When thinking of the best places to see Western art in America, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York doesn’t typically jump to mind. It should. As with every other collecting area featured at the Met, its selection is exemplary. Nocturnes by Fredric Remington highlight the collection in my opinion. Another Western painting from the Met’s collection which has...
'Convergence Station' brings third permanent Meow Wolf installation to Denver
Meow Wolf Denver, Ice World | Photo Credit: Kate Russell “It’s like Meow Wolf.” What “Die Hard” is to action movies or Disney World to theme parks, Meow Wolf has become to immersive, room-filling – building-filling – wildly imaginative, multi-media, entertainment-driven art spaces, the standard against which all others are measured. In fact, Meow Wolf probably deserves credit – or blame – for the art world’s currently most overused adjective: immersive. Meow Wolf didn’t create the first immersive art experience, but when 10 friends shut out of the Santa Fe gallery scene convened in 2008 and hatched the...
Completely renovated Mingei International Museum reopening in San Diego's Balboa Park
Architect Jennifer Luce with metal fabricator A. ZahnerZahner Labs, Hedgerow, a sculptural fence outside Mingei International Museum. | Courtesy Mingei International Museum After a three-year closure for a transformational renovation, Mingei International Museum reopens September 3 with a dynamic slate of exhibitions, commissioned artworks and public programs. Located in San Diego’s historic Balboa Park, featuring the largest concentration of museums and arts organizations west of the Mississippi River, Mingei International Museum’s grand reopening will reveal a compelling new museum of over 50,000 square feet. Enhancements include 10,000 square feet of additional exhibition and programming space along with a...
Indigenous Fashion Show Again Highlighting SWAIA Santa Fe Indian Market
Pamela Baker Designs ©SWAIA Native American fashion. For some, the phrase might recall traditional–often stereotypical–images of 19th century regalia. Moccasins. Buckskin. To others, Native American fashion mirrors the jeans, t-shirts and sneakers worn by everyone in the United States. A third group, Indigenous fashion designers, are looking to their cultural past and creating clothing, jewelry and accessories honoring that history while forwarding it for contemporary wearers. Among the dazzling array of pottery, paintings, textiles, sculpture and jewelry from hundreds of Native American artists on display each August at Santa Fe Indian Market, haute couture from Indigenous fashion designers...
How to make the most of a visit to Santa Fe Indian Market
Santa Fe Indian Market “It means everything.” Ask Eric Tippeconnic what Santa Fe Indian Market means to him and his response is instantaneous. Following a one-year interruption due to COVID-19 after 98 in a row on the Plaza in Santa Fe, the Southwestern Association for Indian Arts (SWAIA) Indian Market returns August 21 and 22 for its 99th in-person event. The Super Bowl of Indigenous art. Tippeconnic, a Southern California painter, has been participating more often than not for almost 20 years. “A Comanche artist like myself is going to have very different work than a Pueblo...
National Museum of Wildlife Art's "Western Visions" art show and sale returning to Jackson, WY this September
NMWA at Sunrise, courtesy National Museum of Wildlife Art The National Museum of Wildlife Art’s “Western Visions” art show and sale has become a highlight on the Western art circuit since debuting 34 years ago. The Jackson, Wyoming-based museum has announced that the show will return to an in-person event this fall. For the past 10 years, more often than not, John Potter (Ojibwe) has submitted a painting to “Western Visions.” He will do so again this year, the invitation to do so, he considers an honor. “I'm a huge fan of that museum; back when I was...
Cheyenne warrior drawings share stories of freedom, captivity
Nock-ko-ist, also known as James Bear's Heart, Cheyenne, 'Buffalo Hunt,' colored pencil on paper.Arthur and Shifra Silberman Collection National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum Traumas of Native American removal from the East to the West by the federal government in the 19th century are well known. Everyone has heard of the Trail of Tears. Far less well known are the examples of Native Americans removed from the West and sent East. One of those stories is being told now – from the Native perspective – at the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens in Jacksonville, Florida. Why Jacksonville?...
Yellowstone? Meh. Yosemite? Yuck. Glacier? Zero out of five stars.
Amber Share, Subpar Parks, Zion National Park. Courtesy of Penguin Random House The splendor of America's national parks have been trumpeted in countless books, paintings and social media posts. They've been called "America's Best Idea." Filmmaker Ken Burns spent 12 hours reveling in their magnificence for a PBS documentary. Not everyone is so impressed. “Nothing to see,” a disgruntled visitor to Glacier National Park posted in an online review. “Just a big rock,” another wrote of Wyoming’s Devil’s Tower National Monument. Amber Share hilariously pairs these critiques – actual 1-star online reviews for national parks – with her...