JAVA-SEPT-2016

An old whitewashed, boarded-up building barely catches the eye when you drive down Van
Buren near 16th Street, except for its cherry-red letters announcing: Roland’s Market. It’s like
a lot of other buildings around that area of entombed dreams and faraway prosperity. Some
parts of Phoenix are just fossilized, waiting for people to re-imagine them. But the bones of
Roland’s show great promise, according to Celine Rille, owner and director of Rille & Co., a creative
studio that offers branding, design and marketing services for the greater Phoenix area. She is part of
the team that recently purchased the building.
Rille has helped to re-imagine a lot of inert spaces in Phoenix—from aiding in the development of the
DeSoto Central Market, to her work at the McKinley Club, and now Roland’s Market. She is interested
in helping make Phoenix a place she wants to live in. “It’s a big goal of mine to help grow downtown
Phoenix and make it the city I want it to be. [I hope] I can leave some sort of lasting impression on
downtown—that would be great,” said Rille.
Rille is originally from England; she graduated with a degree in filmmaking from the Surrey Institute
of Art and Design. “I got my degree in filmmaking and I came out to L.A. and did a bunch of interviews
but didn’t find much common ground. At the time, the industry felt like it was more business than
it was artistic,” said Rille. Despite not really finding her footing in film, she always had a passion for
photography. She ended up taking a job as a photo editor at a magazine in New York. The hustle and
bustle of the city proved a little much for Rille, so she decided to make her way back to England.
But before she went, she dropped in to visit her parents, who were living in Arizona.
On a whim she called the Arizona Republic and asked if they needed a photo editor. They did. She
worked as a photo editor there for 10 years. Eventually, she felt the need to move on to other things.
“Given the state of the newspaper industry, it didn’t make sense for me to stay there any longer,”
Rille said. “Next, I worked with the team who created the Saguaro Hotel in Scottsdale.” She helped
create the vibe of the hotel by doing things like developing the soundtrack for the lobby, creating décor
elements and working closely with the chefs and mixologists.
JAVA 9
MAGAZINE