Allyson Mellberg-Taylor is an artist living and working in Charlottesville, Virginia who creates her own nontoxic and ecologically-responsible ink to use in her work. Despite coming from such natural and responsible stock, her subjects often have mutations or are otherwise malformed, especially facially. She attributes this to the impact of harmful cosmetics on women’s faces over time, and I attribute it to me getting nervous about my mascara.

Mellberg-Taylor is wholly committed to environmentalism. Along with her husband Jeremy, she tries to better the earth in every way she can, from teaching students how to create art sustainably to rescuing injured and neglected birds and finding homes for them.

She’s basically the Mother Teresa of the art world, as evidenced by the blog she runs with her husband, in which they chronicle their adventures in organic gardening and share their letters to their congresspeople. Lucky for us (but maybe not for the birds of Virginia), Mellberg-Taylor takes breaks from all her good Samaritan-ing to make artwork that is decidedly less chaste than her daily activities, creating an interesting balance in between natural wellness and imagined disease in her life and work.

Her art is also strongly influenced by sci-fi movies and television, of which she is an enormous fan. Her most recent show was titled An Unearthly Child, which is the name of the first episode of Dr. Who and also refers to the children depicted in her work, who, based on their conditions and disfigurements, probably aren’t as responsible as she is in terms of their health.

- Pukelear Reactor