Mayme Kratz’ sculpture is made of remnants, fallen bits from the desert floor. Her plaques and columns made of birds’ nests, broken quail eggs, bones and seed-pods suspended in resin are ossuaries and memory boxes, and have arguably become the best known Art-ifacts of the Marshall Way gallery world. The small, embedded objects often break from the resin surface like attempts to recollect a dream, or like those moments prompted by a singular smell or sound that bring back the living from whatever unknown death is. Kratz’ work has varied little over many years, not chasing fashion, but is exceptional for not fatiguing the viewer with its predictable certainty. Her work is a hallmark of desert aesthetics, what could be called “lush minimalism,” content to occupy an indeterminate space between art and design.
Carrie Marill is a relative newcomer to Arizona. Educated in San Francisco and at Cornell University, she has exhibited in California and New York and currently lives outside Phoenix. Painting in gouache on paper, Marill has ranged widely from almost-lush, naturalistic illustration, to sparse pattern work.
Marill’s recent work references the large, public expanses of Japanese screen paintings and the contrasting small private spaces of Persian miniatures in a collection that is almost confessional, revealing her stylistic influences by direct quotations. The brickwork design in Patternmakers is a common element in the Persian miniature paintings that the artist is fond of; similarly, the other patterns on the swathes that fill the top of the piece like hanging obis, or kimono sashes, make mention to fabric designs found in the details of Japanese screens. Both the Persian and Japanese paintings are filled with stories—Mogul horses dance and the histories of ruling clans are recounted in detailed scenery, but the narrative of Marill’s painting follows the artist’s own journey with brush and paper.
Though each painting collection that Marill constructs is contained by a unique theme and collection of decorative elements, Marill uses throughout all her work what she refers to as a “folk art” strategy—a tendency towards simplicity in depiction that places the design firmly on the page, the paint guilelessly on the canvas. “The flattened space is a recurring theme in my work,” states Marill. In that respect, she is not only ranging amongst world art traditions, but also comfortably within the aspirations of 20th Century painters. Her painting, though highly informed by study, is remarkably free of the didacticism that many of her contemporaries are belabored with. “When all is said and done, I’m a visual learner,” Marill explains, “I’m still figuring this out, too.”
Carrie Marill is also exhibiting in Nowhere to Hide: Three Artists in the Desert at Arizona State University Art Museum through February 20, 2010. |
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