The Arizona Republic: January 18, 2008

ARTS AND MUSEUMS: Newcomer provides a fresh look at the ValleyBy Richard NilsenAs 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.