ARTIST SPOTLIGHT: ALLYSON MELLBERG & JEREMY TAYLOR
/In September of 2020, Studio IX members and artists, Allyson Mellberg & Jeremy Taylor hosted an exhibition of their work in The Gallery here at Studio IX. On the eve of their return to the space, an exhibition this August, in collaboration with artist, Laura Josephine Snyder, we present here an interview with them from that earlier time.
We wish to express our deep gratitude and appreciation for Jeremy and Allyson’s continued presence at Studio IX. Their many contributions to our community, from design work, to beautiful bouquets from their gardens, to their palpable love for and support of JBird Coffee and Studio IX, continue to be a constant source of inspiration and joy around here.
Thank you both!
And now, without further ado, here is their interview from September of 2020.
Studio IX:
Let’s talk a bit about your upcoming show. What are you guys working on right now?
Allyson:
We're in the beginning of a harvesting season in our gardens. Pretty soon it'll be time to process indigo and create raw materials. It's about time to harvest walnuts for ink. We’re doing a lot of things that are process-oriented so that we have what we need later to produce new work. We're working on drawings and paintings now. Not a lot of sculpture going on now but Jeremy has some in progress.
Jeremy:
Yes, they're on the back burner right now, just because things are more challenging with everything that's going on.
Allyson:
You’ll see a lot of drawing and painting in our show. It’s all on a smaller scale, which is nice on the one hand…though, for Jeremy, maybe harder, because he is really great at working super big. Being at home so much has made it a little bit easier to work smaller, and you can make more and get more done.
Jeremy:
For openings we’ve usually shown a big salon-style grid of our works. We're going to do a similar thing this go-around with smaller works, but a large quantity.
Studio IX:
Your process is a big part of your work. Could you share a bit more about that?
Jeremy:
In both of our work, though in different ways, we deal with ideas of how humans interact with nature. Many of our works deal with environmental issues. Allyson’s work is more in a kind of Sci-fi alternative reality, and mine is in these awkward situations with animals and plants.
About 15 years ago, both Allyson and I decided to start making work with materials that were completely made from natural materials and things that were also nontoxic and wouldn't harm the environment. So, along with making work that deals with humans interacting with nature, we've made materials that are more symbiotic with nature and our content.
Allyson:
We both had a focus on printmaking in college. There were a lot of toxic materials being used. Many of our teachers, who were basically in our parent’s generation, were having pretty serious health problems from that. Two of my teachers got really sick, then recovered and changed the way they worked. I transitioned to all nontoxic before grad school.
When I met Jeremy he was painting with all sorts of plants, and I had been painting with egg tempera. It was a great meeting point. It was inspiring to see the plants/natural pigments that he was working with. I realized that I could replace all of my toxic pigments in egg tempera with natural ones and it would still work. And it was the same thing with oil painting.
Jeremy:
I'd never done any egg tempera, I'd only painted in oils. Egg tempura was a vehicle that was natural to paint with and also non-toxic. Allyson also brought all these pigments that I didn't know about, like indigo and rose madder. My pigment groupings shifted to more natural materials, and I started to use egg tempera with her.
With the craft revival movement in the early 2000's and the revival of drawing, we shifted our work into working with drawing materials and having a little bit of paint in there to accent thinks, but it's really mostly drawing.
Allyson:
The elevation of works on paper from like the late 90's on was really good for printmakers because we got to break some of the rules of printmaking and making editions—trying to make multiples of the same thing as close as possible. Shifting to works on paper allows you to play. In grad school I had stamps on some of my drawings or paintings, depending on what you want to call them. The umbrella of works on paper allows you to combine watercolor, ink, egg tempera, elements of printmaking, elements of collage, and others. We would even sew onto our drawings… It felt really “open.”
Jeremy:
Allyson and I both worked really big as younger painters. Storing all that large work is really difficult without a large studio space. Storing the work becomes a burden. We started to make works that were smaller, but in greater quantities.
Studio IX:
In addition to the inks and pigments you produce your own paper, right?
Jeremy:
Yeah. There was a steep learning curve getting started and it's taken a while to figure out what to use.
Allyson:
And “do we have enough space to grow this or that plant?”
Jeremy:
Yeah, and do we have enough time to harvest and process and still make our work? We had to make a decision: be a person who processes art materials or be someone who integrates it into your own work/research.
The bulk of our art materials come from things that we generate. All of our walnut ink, a lot of our pigments, like our indigo and our madder, we generate. We generate a lot of paper. We also work on a lot of hot-pressed paper, but we’re conscientious about where the paper comes from.
Allyson:
Yeah, that's a problem, because I really like smooth paper.
Jeremy:
Drawing paper needs to be hot-pressed. A lot of our homemade paper is cold-pressed, so it has a little bit of texture. So it's great for printmaking and you can paint on it, but it's not really great for drawing. But we have grown flax and cotton to make paper.
Allyson:
The growing season runs alongside our studio time. We have different timelines. We're teachers, also, so we have the facilities at both of our schools as resources.
Jeremy:
We have the community garden at PVCC, which provides growing space that we don’t have at home. To make paper you have to have a lot of raw material. A lot of people think "Oh, I can grow a few plants." You need to grow several rows of crop. Then it takes time to process it. It's fairly laborious.
Allyson:
It’s a lot of work.
Jeremy:
Yeah. And so it's important for people who get into natural pigments, or making their own materials, to know that it's very time consuming and labor intensive. It’s a labor of love. We love gardening. We love making the materials, but it's hard work.
Studio IX:
It also adds an interesting dimension to your work. You’ve been collaborating on a book as well, right?.
Jeremy:
Yeah. It keeps evolving. When we first started it was more of a materials book. A "Here are all the materials that can be used for non-toxic and sustainable art making" kind of thing. It has shifted into more of a guide for the process of growing and learning to process these pigments into a usable material.
Allyson:
It has made me think a little bit more about the "why.”
We’ve both been approached by students and other artists who are like, "I want to make my work ecologically sound," and we're like, "Cool. So, you have to invest this time—possibly years—into growing. It's not like you could just go to the eco art store." And a lot of times when we talk to people we can see their eyes glaze over. It’s just a lot of effort. Not everyone wants to do that or has the space to do it.
Jeremy:
The book is trying to make it so that people realize that they can integrate natural, non-toxic materials into their work. We think of it more like farm-to-table, or the green-washing movement—approaching it from a grassroots level. People have been making pigments like this for hundreds of years. We want to bring that to the forefront. To show how accessible it is, and how to integrate it into your work. The book is geared toward the fine artists who are trying to change their materials to be more natural/non-toxic. A lot of the books that we're seeing are more geared towards craft or project oriented things. We would like to give readers a breadth of information so that they have the tools. Not everybody who picks up our book will be like, "Oh, I'm going to do that." But there's enough information that even if they don't want to process rose madder from the root they might be able to say, "Okay, there's this material and it exists out there," and maybe they’ll get it and make it part of their practice. For example, they might go to Kremer Pigment or NaturalPigments.com and get the supplies. Then maybe they’ll reference the parts of our book about egg tempera and put it all together.
Studio IX:
What was the light switch moment for you, Jeremy?
Jeremy:
I got asthma in graduate school related to the solvent's and artists' materials. For me it was more of like "Oh crap. I can't do all the things I love." I also had an "Aha!" moment when I realized that I can make the same things without nasty materials. Interestingly, I was already making work about the environment. Ironically, I was making it with all these really gnarly materials. The shift was natural in that regard, and I don't feel like I've given up much for changing the way we make art. We’re still able to screen print, we're able to etch, we're able to draw and paint.
Allyson:
There's a lot of room for innovation and creativity. The moment Jeremy said: "No way, I'm still going do all my stuff," opened up huge room for discovery. I think that's really exciting.
Studio IX:
There are momentous things unfolding environmentally and culturally. We're all a part of those things and you guys couldn't be more on time with what you’re doing.
Jeremy:
It's timely, but, from my perspective, it's been timely for 30 years.
Studio IX:
Absolutely.
Jeremy:
I think that a lot of people have yet to experience the changes dramatically enough in their lives to make them really think about it—whether it's a natural disaster, a virus, or whatever it is that might have an impact.
Our work isn’t directly political all the time, but we're fairly politically minded in the sense that we're thoughtful about what we're making and how it relates to nature and the environment. That's a huge aspect of our interests: how what we do as humans affects the planet. Farming is one of my interests outside of art, and gardening and growing.
I don't know if you've ever read that book One-Straw Revolution, but he often talks about the energy output to grow plants and creating this cycle of energy output to energy input. It's really important to think about that cycle. Often we'll just be like, "Oh, we need batteries for this thing." We'll throw batteries in it. And I’m thinking: "Well, where did that battery come from? Where was it mined?"
Allyson:
"Where does it go when I get rid of it?"
Jeremy:
And I know that sounds like a weird hobby, but that's what we're interested in.
Allyson:
Jeremy mentioned earlier the science fiction thing… I’m very much interested in science fiction that deals with these issues. I'm not really interested in fantasy. The science fiction that I like is always talking about "How do you deal with the world we live in?” or “What have we done to our world? and “How do we treat each other?" So Ursula K. Le Guin is someone I revisit a lot, books like The Word For World Is Forest or The Lathe of Heaven. Blood Music by Greg Bear. Octavia Butler’s “Xenogenesis” series… All of these books address social and environmental issues that are important to me.
Jeremy:
We are in late stage capitalism. We can buy anything at a whim on Amazon and it is delivered to our front porch. Just thinking about what goes into it: extracting the raw materials to make the object, then manufacturing the object, the labor, then the transportation of the product to our homes…it’s crazy.
I think we are seeing the effects right now, especially in the way the virus is affecting poor people and people of color. We're seeing it with natural disasters as well. That’s why we are thinking about the battery or maybe even where we get things or what happens to them…the life of the object after you purchase it.
Allyson:
I just want to say, I think it's important to always state in these conversations, that we are part of the system, too. We were born in the 70’s into “better living through chemicals.” We can’t get away from wasteful capitalism completely. We have a kid, we're teaching from home right now, and you can order all kinds of stuff from Amazon, and it sucks. We try to get things locally and at other places but yeah, we aren’t above it all.
Jeremy:
Yeah. That's a good point.
Allyson:
It's not like we’re holier than thou. We're stuck in it.
Jeremy:
For us it’s more of a process of seeing where we can make better, more sustainable decisions and ask: “What can we do ourselves?”
Allyson:
We grow food for the winter that we can store. Jeremy did a really good job planning our garden for the Summer. I feel like it was a different approach this year, because we were like, "Will there be food shortages?"
Jeremy:
And “will we have enough food to share?” Every year we shared to “Loaves and Fishes,” and we really try to get the food out there that we can't consume because certain things don't last long. We're only three people. It has been a way to do our part.
Allyson:
I hope what we are doing can be encouraging though, because it's like, "Well, yeah, we were born into this stuff, but we can try to make sound decisions in our lives that go against that.”
Jeremy:
It’s about raising awareness. If you go on Instagram you find a culture built around influencing other people—Like “what can I portray about myself and how I appear…to ‘sell’ something.”
I think it's good to “sell” thinking about where things come from and how they're made.
Allyson:
And “This is what your food looks like when its actually growing.”
Jeremy:
Yeah. Being aware that we are part of this virtual, synthetic world, but trying to shift it, too.
Studio IX:
Ok. New question: What's your favorite color?
Allyson:
Light blue.
Studio IX:
It's light blue for both of you?
Jeremy:
I would say a blue-green for me.
Allyson:
I like the blue we get when we fresh-process our Indigo. Not dark Indigo that requires fermentation, but the fresh one, a bright “robin's egg” blue. Because it's an oxidization process, it's green in the bath and then turns blue when you take it out into the air and it oxidizes. It's like magic. Whenever I see that color, I'm just like, "Oh, it’s so beautiful."
Jeremy:
Right. I agree a hundred percent. It's weird. It's its own color. When you garden and you grow things and you participate in nature more, you see these colors that are just like, "Whoa, that color doesn't exist anywhere."
Allyson:
That's a cool thing about growing—not just pigments, but anything—I get really excited about stuff that I might not pay attention to otherwise. And because we're parents our kid is also part of that and it's magical. That's been really great in this summer specifically. We couldn't go anywhere and we're really much more isolated than normal, so we’ve been like "Oh yeah, we had a good day today because we saw a praying mantis, this plant bloomed or that plant fruited.”
Jeremy:
It might seem hooey speaking about this, but I feel like I've been really much more in touch with the cycle of nature and gardening this Summer because when I'm not working on zoom and teaching graphic design or something I'm in the garden. So I know when it's going to rain, and when to plant something, or when to harvest something, and when to rotate. It's been great to feel like I’m really “in it.”
Allyson:
It’s definitely kept our morale up.
Studio IX:
Thank you both for taking the time and for all that you’re doing. Always good to talk to you.
Allyson & Jeremy:
Thanks, Greg.