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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.
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
60 Years of Gemini G.E.L. Prints in Los Angeles
The biggest names in late 20th and early 21st century art have come through the doors at Gemini G.E.L.’s Los Angeles printmaking workshop. Roy Lichtenstein, Ellsworth Kelly, Jasper John’s, Frank Gehry, Ed Ruscha, David Hockney to scratch the surface. John Baldessari, Philip Guston, Julie Mehretu, Bruce Nauman, Isamu Noguchi, Claes Oldenburg, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella, Richard Serra. Those...
'Visualizing K’é’ with Marwin Begay at Wheelwright Museum
For Marwin Begaye (b. 1970; Navajo Nation) it starts with birds. Birds are the foundation of his art making. His connection and interest goes back to childhood. “When you herd sheep, there's nothing, but you, sheep, and the birds, and the clouds, and that curiosity,” Begaye said. Begaye’s curiosity in birds encouraged him to study their significance to Navajo culture later in life. He spoke to elders. He researched. He read. Anthropological reports from the Navajo Nation in the late 1800s and early 1900s continually referenced Hastíín Klah (1867-1937). In Navajo, “hastíín” means “mister;” “klah” refers to the left-handed. Hastíín...
Dyana Hesson's Native Plant Portraits Across Arizona
Plants have been a constant in Dyana Hesson’s (b. 1966) life. Long before she was a painter of plants, plants were a part of her family culture growing up in Northern California. The family had a garden. Hesson remembers her mother’s green thumb and her brother’s interest in botany developed in high school. That brother took a job at a nursery. In support, Hesson’s father built him a greenhouse. She remembers worm beds around the house. “All that came first, but I was always a creative kid so when it came time to decide what to paint – when I...
High-Tech Comes to Phoenix' Desert Botanical Garden in New Exhibition
Deserts are typically subtle, quiet, slow. They don’t rush and boom and soar with the power and obvious grandeur of waterfalls and mountains and forests leading to assumptions they’re baren, boring. Nothing could be further from the truth. People may well be divided into two categories: those who can “see” the desert and its splendor, and those who never give it a second glance. Artists “see” the desert. Maynard Dixon saw it. Georgia O’Keeffe saw it. Ed Mell saw it. The UK-based artist-led studio ScanLAB Projects is helping people see the desert for its subtle spectacle from October 11, 2025,...
Artists Then and Now Humanize California's Migrant Agricultural Workers
Scorned migrants from far away come to California’s agricultural fields looking for a better life. Not an easy life. Nothing easy about this work they perform in the sun, hunched over, on their feet. Endless hours of manual labor. A better life. In the 1930s, Dorothea Lange (1895–1965) photographed Okies blown in from the Great Plains by the Dust Bowl. Her iconic Migrant Mother (1936) photograph of the era, of the people, of the plight, may be the most recognized picture in American history. The weary, yet resolute woman. Her hungry children cling to her. The only safety and security...
San Francisco's de Young Museum Debuts Reinstalled Arts of Indigenous America Galleries
San Francisco’s de Young museum debuted completely refreshed Arts of Indigenous America galleries on August 26, 2025. Artworks on view span from Alaska to Central America. The presentation begins, however, in California. The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco – the de Young and the Legion of Honor – are located on land unceded by the Ramaytush Ohlone, the original inhabitants of what is now the San Francisco Peninsula. The inaugural installation in the first gallery explores the interconnection between art, ceremony, and the land in the Hupa, Karuk, Tolowa, Wiyot, and Yurok communities of northwestern California. “Rooted in Place:...
Marie Watt's Big Week
How’s this for a good week? On September 9, a press release went out announcing Marie Watt (b.1967; Seattle) as one of two winners for this year’s Heinz Awards for the Arts. The Heinz Awards recognizes six individuals annually, two each working across the arts, the economy, and the environment. Artists are selected after having produced a body of work displaying excellence enhancing the human experience. Established in 1993 to honor the memory of U.S. Senator John Heinz, the selection includes a $250,000 unrestricted cash prize from the Heinz Family Foundation. Being so honored would serve as the achievement of...
Gustave Baumann Beyond Woodblock Prints
Art lovers have a deep roster to choose from when picking a favorite artist for representing northern New Mexico’s landscape. In my starting five along with Louisa McElwain (1953-2013) and Victor Higgins (1884-1949) is Gustave Baumann (1881–1971). Baumann’s woodblock prints perfectly capture the soft yellows of the region’s turning cottonwoods, aspens and chamisa. He nails the adobe, the sky, the hollyhocks. Opposite McElwain’s dramatic movement and grandeur, Baumann’s landscapes are still, produced on a small scale, possessed of an undeniable warmth. Somehow, they’re inviting. Like northern New Mexico itself. I was astounded to learn how much more artwork besides the...
James Lavadour is Nature
James Lavadour is nature. In his artwork. Lavadour’s tumultuous, abstract landscape paintings depict the effects of fire and wind and erosion on the land. Powerful, dramatic forces. Forces he mirrors in paint with a brush in his hand. The surface is the land, the paint the elements, Lavadour the forces of nature and time. "In paint there is hydrology, erosion, mass gravity, mineral deposits, etc.; in me there is fire, energy, force, movement, dimension, and reflective awareness,” Lavadour has said. Brushed, poured, scraped, and dripped, Lavadour’s painting echoes the movements of earth, water, and stone, reflecting the elemental energy of...
National Hispanic Cultural Center Breaks New Ground in Art History with "Voces del Pueblo"
You can Google anything. Or so it seems. When Ray Hernández-Durán tried Googling information about first generation Chicana and Chicano artists in New Mexico at the beginning stages of researching an exhibition on the subject, the professor of Spanish colonial art and architecture in the University of New Mexico’s Department of Art was stunned to discover how little information was available. “Everybody knows bultos and retablos and santos. They know the Pueblo artwork. They know the white modernists, but when it came to this generation of the Chicano movement, there was nothing I could find,” Hernández-Durán said. “I Googled the...
Humor in Contemporary Native American Art
Humor. Dark humor. So dark you could develop film in it. Anyone looking for knee-slappers at “Reservation for Irony: Native Wit and Contemporary Realities,” an exhibition of Native American art at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Santa Fe (906 S. St. Francis Dr.), won’t find any. Well, maybe David Bradley’s (b. 1954; Minnesota Chippewa) Land O’ Bucks Revisited (1990-92). Bradley’s send-up of the idealized Native woman on old Land O’Lakes butter packaging takes her commercialized features to absurd, buxom levels, turning the sweet, feathered, fetishized “Indian maiden” into a tawdry pin up girl. Bradley’s vivid, densely composed paintings critique the commodification...