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Daily Dolan Geiman: January 03, 2008
Gouache Paradise: The Work of Carrie Marill
So I decided to start doing a little blog series on artists and their command of a particular medium or material. What better way to start than with the ever perplexing Gouache. Pronounced 'Gwash', this opaque watercolor is a favorite of screen-printers turned painters, or vice versa, due to its flatness and opacity, much like silkscreen ink. Painters who demand the vibrancy of watercolors but who value the thick hues and opacity of acrylic paint find this to be their happy medium, no pun intended. After years of using this pasty little tube of paint, I have developed a fondness, much as one develops a fondness for toads. The type of fondness that says, "I like you, just as long as I don't have to deal with you on a daily basis."
What I am trying to say is that i have yet to master the use of gouache. Yes, I admit it. But that's fine, because I have found the true master of the medium and in the world of gouache she is Queen.
I am speaking of Carrie Marill, whose floral and faunal subjects are quite dear to my heart, and whose approach to the medium is like a ballet: crisp and beautifully gentle on the eyes, but well practiced and backed by artistic muscle. Her beguiling sense of space and her dexterous use of the brush allow her to create little D&uum;lrer-esque worlds on paper. Check out these pieces and be prepared to be awed."
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The Arizona Republic: January 18, 2008
ARTS AND MUSEUMS: Newcomer provides a fresh look at the Valley
By Richard Nilsen
As a newcomer to Arizona, Carrie Marill can still see things we no longer notice.
The city and its surroundings fairly pop out of her work now showing at Lisa Sette Gallery in Scottsdale. Here's Good Sam hospital, there's the grain elevator in Tempe. Here's Shaw Butte, there's St. Mary's Basilica.
Her work mixes the things of our common experience with what she calls a "folk-art aesthetic," which borrows a look from quilts. Each of her paintings might well be a design for a quilt or a quilt patch.
The two main pieces in the show are Everything Has Its Time and It's a Cowboy State, both acrylic paint on linen, and both most left blank, with images painted only along the edges, like the border on a blanket.
The first is edged with the silhouettes of Valley mountains - the White Tank, Four Peaks, Papago Buttes, Camelback, Estrella - almost as if they outlined the Valley of the Sun like the four sacred peaks of Dinetah, the Navajo ritual geography.
It's an interesting and arresting graphic design - mostly void - but also conveys a sense of myth.
The other is a cityscape, with familiar Valley landmarks along the borders, like the lined-up Los Angeles photos of Ed Ruscha. Again, the center of the painting is naked linen, and the cityscape becomes the blanket edging. You can't help walk your eye along the streetscape and enjoy the spark of recognition as you spot the normally banal landmarks of a drive-by culture.
Art is supposed to wake us up to the richness of our lives; Marill does that in a quiet, understated way.
Another painting has a ring of grackle silhouettes on the edge with a kind of sunburst mandala in the center. Ordinary grackles. Sheesh.
The freshness of Marill's vision is the kind of delight you always hope to discover entering a gallery.
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Todd Oldham Studio Blog: August 10, 2007
SUMMER ART TREATS
"...There are some terrific summer art treats this August that I found wildly inspiring. If you're out in Los Angeles, be sure to check out CARRIE MARILL at SIXSPACE gallery. The show is called NEWFOUNDLAND and the gouache on paper paintings explore extinct and endangered plants and animals. The astonishing quality of the work is not as visable in the photos of the work, so try to see them in person. Carrie Marill is a very gifted artist and one to keep an eye on..."
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LA Times: August 10, 2007
AROUND THE GALLERIES: Endangered, threatened . . . safe
By Leah Ollman, Special to The Times
The "newfoundland" of Carrie Marill's lovely show at Sixspace is not the known locale but an imagined place. It exists on paper as a visual sanctuary for threatened and endangered species of plants and animals, mostly birds.
In many of Marill's paintings, delicately rendered in gouache on paper, several types of birds perch on a single plant. Their natural habitats may be far-flung, but the Arizona-based Marill brings the living things together based on what they have in common: the fragility of their survival.
In one painting, birds from North, Central and South America -- a great egret, a least tern, a mountain pimpernel and a wader with the charming name of double-striped thick-knee -- make their home in an ethereally beautiful sprig of endangered Tennessee yellow-eyed grass. In another work, Marill eliminates not only geographical differences but also the natural distinction between dwellers of land and sea when she perches several birds on a branch of globally threatened red coral.
Marill is deliberate about detail, but her style feels refreshingly unburdened by scientific precision. She leaves much of every sheet white, reinforcing the notion that these scenes are hybrids of the actual and abstract. In several pieces, she applies cutout figures to the surface, but the effect feels gratuitous and is less interesting than the more straightforward work, which is quiet in approach but well-informed and impassioned.
Sixspace, 5803 Washington Blvd., Culver City, (323) 932-6200, through Aug. 25. Closed Sundays and Mondays. www.sixspace.com.
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Suicide Girls: Jul 25, 2007
Carrie Marill Interview
By Caryn Coleman
Caryn Coleman: Two part question - Can you explain a little bit about your new series of endangered flora and fauna in newfoundland? How did you become interested in this subject and what did you learn while making the series?
You say that you utilize painting as a way to investigate subjects. How do you pick what subjects you want to learn about and how does this organically shape conceptually into your work?
Carrie Marill: It's usually like you had said - an organic evolution of things. For instance, with "newfoundland," I had previously been painting birds and wanted to know more about them so I took a different vein within the world of birds. I am a visual learner, so navigating an otherwise complex subject with visuals from books, movies, the internet and hands on experience are my primary ways of studying up and educating myself on a particular subject. With all that is going on in the world, I felt compelled to familiarize myself with threatened, endangered and extinct species. After doing research at the library, bookstores and online I realized that I needed to narrow my search due to the vast quantity of extinct, endangered and threatened species, so I choose to focus on birds and plants.
I wanted to be as objective as possible with the subject matter so I revisited Darwin's "Theories on Evolution" and other contemporary writers who recontextualized his ideas. Though extinction is a step in the process of natural selection, I soon realized through this research that the current extinction rate is a crisis primarily caused by humans, i.e. rapid over-development, loss of habitat, pollution, agriculture, and invasive species are some of the heaviest abusers of the ecosystem.
Caryn Coleman: You recently tackled string theory in your paintings - a very intense scientific theory. Can you explain what led to your interest in combining string theory with subject matter of animals?
Carrie Marill: In contemporary Theoretical Physics there are two popular schools of thought (among many others, old and new) on creation and existence. Succiently, String Theory attempts to unify the known natural forces by describing them with the same set of equations, and the Theory of Everything, fully links together all known physical phenomena. With the "String Theory" series I was attempting to merge these two concepts and create a visual representation of how I imagined these hypothesis working. I feel that there is a connection between all living beings from rocks to whales. It should be noted that I am accessing these concepts loosely and from a broad perspective and honestly, they are quite fascinating, but most of the rhetoric and content is difficult to absorb. Creating drawings from how I imagine them working has been a useful tool to dissect and digest the immense amount of information being produced on these subjects.
The interview continues, read the full article here.
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 Modified Arts: Carrie Marill :: Dirty Bird
Show Dates: September 21 - October 26, 2007
407 E. Roosevelt, Phoenix, AZ 85004. tel: 602.462.5516
"Modified Arts is pleased to present a new body of work by local artist, Carrie Marill. This series of twenty small-scale gouache on paper paintings reflects her abiding interest in the plight of her immediate environment and the wildlife that inhabits it. This is her first solo exhibition at Modified Arts.
Marill's bright palette and Pop sensibilities are a pleasing and balanced contrast to the often darker implications of her subject matter. Marill collects bits of Styrofoam from the canal near her home. The material wears down, like rocks, into smooth biomorphic shapes that Marill finds attractive. Marill says these Styrofoam pieces remind her of the sculptures of Hans Arp, and incorporates them into her paintings by tracing their outlines on richly hued papers. She then cuts and applies the paper shapes to her works to create colorful masses that become little 'trash islands' for her meticulously painted birds.
These finely rendered birds have appeared before in Marill's work, and are also closely tied to her interest in the world around her. She bird watches in her own backyard and recently created a series of seventeen larger works that featured local threatened and endangered species.
'They say the best place to start bird watching is in your own backyard,' says Marill, 'so that's what I do. The challenge in this work is drawing out the beauty in the mundane and frankly tragic things I see every day.'
Marill has shown her paintings in New York, Miami, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Her paintings will be on view at Modified from September 21st through October 26th. For more information about Carrie Marill's work and gallery hours, please contact Kimber Lanning at (480) 835-7131."
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SIXSPACE: Carrie Marill :: Newfoundland
Show Dates: July 28 - August 25, 2007
Gallery Hours: Tuesday through Saturday from 12 - 6 pm
5803 West Washington Boulevard, Culver City, CA 90232. tel: 323.932.6200
"Sixspace is proud present Newfoundland, the second solo exhibition at the gallery by Carrie Marill. Newfoundland features a new series of gouache-on-paper paintings depicting threatened or endangered flora and fauna existing in an imaginary world.
Carrie Marill utilizes painting as a way to investigate particular subjects (such as her 2006 exhibition Duke and Duchess focusing on the story of Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Mrs. Wallis Simpson and Edward, Prince of Wales and her previous series exploring String Theory). For Newfoundland, Marill has familiarized herself with species (focusing primarily on plants and birds) whose status is either threatened, endangered, or extinct. Within her imagery she uniquely navigates and accesses the rich past of natural history illustration thus creating a modern re-interpretation of these threatened and endangered species. By highlighting that the three major contributors to loss of species are habitat destruction, invasive species, and human development, Marill brings delicate attention to this serious problem."
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 Melinda Bergman (602) 373-6552
Carrie Marill (415) 680-4353
Sue Chenoweth (602) 793-3737
Visual Artists Melinda Bergman, Sue Chenoweth and Carrie Marill Present DeNatured, a Collaborative Multimedia Exhibition and Installation at the Icehouse.
DeNatured: Opens November 3, 2006 in Phoenix, AZ. By appointment until November 9, 2006.
Phoenix, AZ - October 10, 2006 - DeNatured is an exhibition of art concerned with a familiar underlying tension central to urban life: the adaptation of place to accommodate the human experience. The show opens on First Friday, November 3, 2006 from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. at 429 W. Jackson Street. DeNatured features individual works created by Phoenix-based visual artists Melinda Bergman, Sue Chenoweth and Carrie Marill. The show also features two collaborative installations by the artists: a slide show of images projected in the Cathedral Room and a sprawling sculpture in the center of the White Column Room.
Each artist uses gouache on paper for one of her individual works. These paintings begin a dialog through mark making which evolves into a conversation about form and color. Yet, the individual artists' concerns emerge in the
particularities of their work. Bergman will install sculptural elements to reflect her interest in the maddening potential of historical and institutional embeddedness. Chenoweth's focus is on the impulse to horde material goods, she understands our idiosyncratic collections as metaphors for how we live our lives. And Marill's artwork explores how people respond to the ever-expanding urban environment; she finds natural elements in the most unexpected places of the city.
DeNatured, a collaborative installation, dynamically demonstrates the artists' relationships to each other and their process. "The sculpture is organic" Bergman said, "that's also the nature of our collaboration and how the show developed, too." "The only order is one we impose," added Chenoweth, "it is made of ceramics and wood and is filled with color." While Marill sees a kind of surrealist game in her Cathedral Room piece, an "exquisite corpse" of visual images drawn from the personal archives of each artist. Marill's contribution includes found images: "like a vacation in a box" they are drawn from archives of family photos she discovered in various thrift stores in
Arizona. Who knows? Maybe your Aunt Mildred will be on display.
Image: DeNatured, Mel Bergman, Sue Chenoweth, Carrie Marill, gouache on paper, 2006
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Phoenix New Times: Nov 9, 2006
Natural Instincts Mother of invention
By Wynter Holden
"Mother Nature is no pushover. Nudge gently and she'll deliver food, fresh drinking water and fossil fuels. Take too much and she fights back with hurricanes, earthquakes and tidal waves, as the world has recently relearned. The impact of humanity on nature is the focus of "DeNatured," a collaborative effort from artists Melinda Bergman, Sue Chenoweth and Carrie Marill at The Icehouse.
It's a quietly powerful exhibition. Wall paintings depict abstracted bloodied seals and endangered whales. Piles of ceramic driftwood share space with discarded Christmas trees salvaged from trash bins and transformed into retro sculptures. These three artists seamlessly integrate nature and industrialism in a way that we, as a species, have not embraced.
Take Marill's As a Matter of Fact, The Image Has To Be Understood Phenomenologically, for example. The background of the piece is a harsh, glaring white that visually connects with the sterile walls of the Icehouse. From this cold emptiness, a menagerie of bold, detailed birds emerges - an eagle, a heron, a pink flamingo - all so finely detailed and perfectly modeled that they appear to have flown out of a bird-watching manual. It's a beautiful image. But its depth flows far beyond soft brush strokes and Marill's grasp of color and shading. The birds appear at first to be joyful and free. A closer inspection reveals their claws are bound with colored strings. In the same way a tethered falcon is tied to his master's glove, we are all tied to our homes, our cars and our material possessions. Our freedom is an illusion.
...
Bergman is primarily a wood artist, Marill has great mastery of traditional gouache techniques, and Chenoweth, for this exhibition, at least, is obsessed with using model railroad supplies. In "DeNatured," these lines blur. The exhibition feels like one giant installation that speaks to man's natural instinct to mold his surroundings to fit his own needs. By collaborating on this central theme, rather than creating solo work to highlight their individual talents, the group is able to drive its point home in a powerfully visual way.
We may cut down forests to build concrete towers, but nature will always find a way to grow pretty little trees through the cracks."
Read the full article here...
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Arizona State University Art Museum: New American City: Artists Look Forward
September 9th, 2006 - January 27th, 2007
"It's a Cowboy State by Carrie Marill is a map of sorts to smaller works painted directly on the walls throughout the ASU Art Museum. Dr. Patricia Gober, who wrote the catalog essay for this exhibition, has written that there are no built monuments in Phoenix. No arch or needle or statue that we can all agree upon. With no agreed upon monuments, Marill finds what she considers her own personal monuments as she drives around the city.
Strangely enough, the artist explains that the concept for this project came from traffic school. In her words: The instructor explained that Arizona had its own set of traffic laws unique to the area, to which he perfectly attributed to living in "a cowboy state." In the years I have lived here, that phrase has come to epitomize much of my experience in the great State of Arizona.
When I moved to Phoenix from the Bay Area, I noticed how much of my travel was limited to the freeway and for that reason knew little of the surrounding areas. I started diverting my routes and discovered a unique character of Phoenix hidden from usual traveled highways. Throughout the older parts of this spanning metropolis there lies a "no-holds-barred" sensibility, where experimentation with architecture and signage is embraced. I am taken by the modernism used in these utilitarian structures, which combine to invent a futuristic desert design of some lost past... I have attempted to collect and interpret some of the exceptional locations I find characterize the spirit of Phoenix.
Marill paints in flat acrylic colors and includes only the important details, stripping the buildings of their surroundings. They are reduced to their essence, emphasizing their unique and often quirky architecture. Her installation becomes a highly personal tour of a city and she invites you to take the tour by finding all ten paintings (and some additional surprises) throughout the Museum. In a city that is criticized for its sameness in terms of architecture and development, these buildings suggest a history that is rich and complex."
from New American City: Artists Look Forward, September 9, 2006 - January 27, 2007, Arizona State University Art Museum, Tempe, Arizona, Curated by Heather Sealy Lineberry and John D. Spiak
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Phoenix New Times March 23, 2006
The Farmer and the Belle - Another side of things
By Leanne Potts
"Phoenix artists Carrie Marill and Matt Moore, both 29, couldn't be more different from each other -- on the surface, anyway. She grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area; he grew up on a farm in Waddell. He is a fourth-generation farmer known for plowing floor plans of tract houses into 40-acre barley fields; she is known for making intimate, elegant paintings of furniture and fake plants. The husband and wife share their lives and their studio space on Grand Avenue, and they also share an interest in making art about how our acquisitive natures get the better of us."
Read the interview here...
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FLAVORPILL January 31 - February 6, 2006
Cultural Stimuli in LA". Issue 153: deciduous flavor
"Best known for her environmental inquiries, Carrie Marill's most recent body of work satirizes society's thirst for celebrity. Fourteen gouache paintings depict items won in the much ballyhooed Sotheby's auction of the estate of Wallis Warfield Simpson (aka The Duchess of Windsor). Simpson was the wayward American temptress, twice divorced, for whom King Edward of England abdicated his throne in 1936. They went on to become the Brad and Angelina of their day. These paintings are no doubt easier on the wallet than the original items they depict. What a deliciously meta way to partake in the scramble for artifacts bearing the celebrity trace." (CG)
Note: This exhibit remains on display through Sat 2.25 (Tues-Sat: 12-6pm).
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SIXSPACE: Carrie Marill :: Duke and Duchess
Project room :: Objects of Desire (group works on paper show)
Show Dates: February 3rd - 25th, 2006
Gallery Hours: Tuesday through Saturday from 12 - 6 pm
5803 West Washington Boulevard, Culver City, CA 90232. tel: 323.932.6200
"This February at sixspace Arizona-based artist Carrie Marill presents her latest body of work, Duke and Duchess; an exhibition based on the Sotheby estate auction for the duke and duchess of Windsor. Duke and Duchess contains fourteen gouache paintings depicting personal items included in this auction. Mounted in walnut frames with adorning ribbons attached (marked with the Windsor/Wallis family seal), these works poke fun at genre painting and the idea of ownership. Perhaps most significantly, Marill's new paintings deal with the gluttony of winning and how the act of gaining a possession is often times more thrilling than the end result."
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Platform Gallery
PLAIT: 6 artists' work informed by fabric, adornment and traditional craft.
Featuring new works by: Monica Cook, Scott Ellegood, Sarah Hardesty, Carrie Marill, Aili Schmeltz, Amy Shapiro
Artist Reception Saturday November 12, 7 - 9pm
Show Dates: November 8th - December 2nd, 2005
Gallery Hours: Tuesday - Saturday. 11- 5 pm
439 N. 6th Avenue, Tucson, AZ. tel: 520.882.3886
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Phoenix New Times: Best Of Phoenix 2005
BEST STOP ON ART DETOUR - The studio of Carrie Marill and Matt Moore
"We ambled through dozens of studios during Art Detour, the downtown Phoenix art walk sponsored by ArtLink that's held one weekend each year, usually in March. Months later, we have to admit, our recall of this year's now institutionalized city art event is just all one big beige blur -- except for a very distinct spot that stands out in our memory. It's the shared studio space of Carrie Marill and Matthew Moore -- a well-tended Grand Avenue, by-appointment-only studio at the very back of a series of artist studios leased out for years by art doyenne Beatrice Moore.
Husband and wife, Marill and Moore peacefully and productively co-exist in their joint studio space, and, while their work is very different, you get the feeling that, in many ways, they share not only physical space, but the same basic aesthetic as well. Moore's work is land-based, inspired by his day job as manager of his family's fourth-generation farm in the West Valley. Marill's stylistically stripped-down yet elegant paintings and drawings of various landscapes explore the idea of the sameness that pervades society.
As we stood gazing at Marill's beautiful paintings, an artist we trust whispered, "Buy something -- she's getting big in L.A." (See our "Fun and Games" section in Best of Phoenix for examples of Marill's work.) So we did, after which Moore offered us a gigantic home-grown carrot, which, along with the couple's artwork, was the sweetest thing we'd tasted all weekend. "
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LA Weekly (October 28th - November 3rd, 2005)
"Pictures From the Unibrow Revolution
Or, how outlaw art went mainstream
by DOUG HARVEY
Something remarkable is happening just beneath the surface of the art world. Its makeup has been shifting - slightly and subtly at first, but with a recent torrential surge that may have put it on the verge of a sea change...
Caryn Coleman's sixspace gallery - which also recently made the jump to Culver City from its downtown-adjacent venue - doesn't seem to draw any distinction between high and lowbrow, exhibiting art-school peintures like Carrie Marill and Sarah Cromarty in the same breath as hot-rod graphic designer COOP and Dogtown chronicler Glen Friedman..."
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Southwest Art
Annual Emerging Artists Issue
September 2005
Featured in the article:
"21 Under 31
Introducing 21 young artists you should know"
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Howard House: Terra Non Firma
June 16 - July 16, 2005
604 Second Avenue, Seattle, WA 98104
tel: 206.256.6399
email: info@howardhouse.net
"...The American landscape is no longer the pregnant garden replete with promise that lured the gaze of 19th century painters such as Asher B. Durand or Alfred Bierstadt. The wilderness has been paved over to make way for suburban dwellings. Encounters with displaced wildlife--cougars, black bears--are a jarring result of suburban expansion. City parks, topiary gardens, and nature reserves are simulations for what is lost and gained in progress...
Arizona artist Carrie Marill's charismatic gouache paintings feature houseplants in electrically heated pots and Nature t-shirts of the type found in rural
novelty shops or zoos..."
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THE NEW LOS ANGELES ART FAIR - FOR CONTEMPORARY AND NEW ART
January 27 - 30, 2005
Santa Monica Civic Auditorium - 1855 Main Street
artLA - 7358 Beverly Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90036 | tel: 323.937.5525 | email: info@artLA.net
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Artlink
2004
Honorable Mention
The Artlink Juried Exhibition is a showcase for the best contemporary artwork being created in Arizona. Sponsored by Artlink, Inc., a non-profit coalition of downtown Phoenix artists, galleries, and art-friendly businesses which also brings you First Fridays and Art Detour.
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SIXSPACE: Andrew Sutherland And Carrie Marill
October 9 - November 6, 2004
"...Making her Los Angeles debut, Carrie Marill presents a new series of acrylic-on-canvas paintings featuring elements of design, such as furniture and interiors, and modulations. Providing a subtle contrast to Sutherland's strong/bold pieces, Marill's delicately painted works represent artificial objects. Through her painting Marill explores how or even if two-dimensional painting can stimulate an affected emotional response. Because most objects today can be simulated, she questions if the artificial becomes more of the "natural" and the painting itself is more "unnatural."..." (read more) |
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eye lounge
Harvest, an exhibition currated by founding members Greg Esser and Carrie Bloomston
Emily Matyas in the Project Room
October 1 - 30, 2004
HARVEST: featuring kris keul, matt moore, joe willie smith, christiana moss, ted troxel, dan hoffman, christopher alt, carrie bloomston, carolyn lavender, doug baulos, cyndi coon, carrie marill, jennifer kiraley, greg esser, melissa martinez, cindy dach, mike slack, rebecca ross, kate timmerman and sue chenoweth. |
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