When we checked in with local artist Allyson Mellberg-Taylor for this week’s Open Studio, she gave us quite a bit to think about—from the non-toxic art book she’s working on with her husband, Jeremy Taylor, to "Skins" and Doris Day movies. In fact, Mellberg-Taylor was so generous with her time that we thought we’d share some additional material from her interview with C-VILLE. Read more below the photo, and don’t forget to tell us which local artists you’d like us to check in with!
What’s inspiring about Charlottesville right now?
What excites me every year around this time is that this is when everything is growing. The walnuts are starting to fall to the ground and rot, so that means it’s time to make things, and our garden is starting to produce food that’s ready to pick… For both Jeremy and me, winter is hard, feast or famine, but summer is just great, all feast—everything is producing, growing, and it’s good. I’m from Wisconsin, and sumer in Charlottesville are longer than where I grew up, so this time of year is always prety happy and magical for me, because it’s a lot less so up there.
What songs are playing on your iPod?
I have really been revisiting Deerhoof lately. I never got to see them play in Charlottesville—I know they played a while back at the Satellite Ballroom, and before that with the Flaming Lips, but I’d been working night classes and hadn’t been able to do either. They do so much with so little, it’s amazing. Their drummer is terriffic.
Favorite artist in your genre? Outside your genre?
This is going to sound really cheesy, but I mean it: In my genre, I’d have to say my husband. Everything Jeremy has done—the research into non-toxic art-making that he started and, when I met him, we started collaborating in doing, it’s been a really big part of our lives. But also because his work is really beautiful. Even before I started dating him, I knew of him and his work and felt the same way. His images of animals that are so human.
Outside of my genre, Louise Bourgeois. She’s a sculptor, in her late 90s. She had a retrospective in D.C. earlier in the summer. My work is nothing like hers, but she’s done almost everything, from printmaking to painting to drawing,and she can carve marble like an old master. She’s had a sketchbook journal and a writing journal and she’s written about her life—her writing is so beautiful and clear. While I was working on my undergraduate and Master’s theses, she was a really big help to me. A really sassy, little old French lady.