Molly Haynes

Name: Molly Haynes

Studio location: Brooklyn, NY

Website / social links: mollyhaynes.us, @mollyhaynes_

Loom type or tool preference: Macomber 8 harness

Years weaving: 8

Fiber inclination: sisal, wool, cotton, linen

Current favorite weaving book: String, Felt, Thread: The Hierarchy of Art and Craft in American Art by Elissa Auther (not specifically weaving, more on fiber art)

 

 

1. How did you discover weaving and was what your greatest resource as a beginner?

I learned how to weave my sophomore year as a RISD textiles major. I had no prior knowledge of the craft before college. My weaving professor provided us with scanned printouts of books such as ‘A Handweaver’s Pattern Book’ by Marguerite Porter Davidson. We were given a lot of drafting exercises which were super helpful in understanding different constructions.

2. How do you define your practice – do you consider yourself an artist / craftsperson / weaver / designer / general creative or a combination of those? Is this definition important to you?

I would call myself an artist, weaver, and designer. I like to think that my practice blurs the line between all three. I find that my art is stronger because of my ability to design within the constraints of the loom. It enables me to pair down a concept to the essentials.

3. Describe your first experience with weaving.

It was total magic after setting up the loom for the first time, to see all of the mechanics come together after being so daunting. It was a very satisfying, child-like joy.

4. What is your creative process, from the initial idea to the finished piece? Are there specific weave structures, looms, or fibers that are important to your process?

My creative process involves a balance of regimented planning and spontaneous experimentation. I sketch out my weave structures on graph paper to get started. I use a lot of exaggerated deflected wefts—I like to bundle heaps of fibers together to create two distinct surfaces that contrast with one another. I often let these bundles of fiber burst into fringe. The fringe is a release of the wild and sublime; it gives the viewer a chance to encounter something lively and unexpected within a contained environment. Lately I’ve been making a lot of miniature studies on narrow warps—like a sketchbook— and then blowing them up to larger-scale pieces. I find that working this way allows me to maintain the spontaneity and weirdness of the smalls, but at a monumental scale.

Materials are a very important part of my process—I tend to let the material dictate the final form of the piece. I’m a huge fan of sisal twine because of its wiry, horsehair-like nature. It also makes the best fringe because of its stiffness and volume. It's rapidly renewable, easily accessible and humble. I’ve been trying to incorporate more recycled fibers and mill-ends into my work also, including salvaged lobster line found in Maine and Massachusetts. Embedding synthetic materials into natural makes for bizarre, tactile surfaces. I like when a material has a background story, it transforms the piece into a physical marker of place and time.

 

5. Does your work have a conceptual purpose or greater meaning? If so, do you center your making around these concepts?

The core of my work is to convey a sense of awe one may feel when witnessing natural phenomena intersecting with the built environment. There is beauty in the tension. Weaving allows me to convey this duality—its a structural yet wild, contained chaos.

6. What is your favorite part of the weaving process and why? What’s your least favorite?

My favorite part is the first few inches in on a new weaving and seeing the idea in my head finally materialize. I still get that child-like joy of when I was first learning to weave. I also love the repetitive, trance-like act of threading the loom.

My least favorite is adding heddles onto the harnesses because I didn’t plan out how many I needed in advance! I can be pretty impatient with setup and tend to cut corners, which sometimes comes back to bite me later on.

7. Do you sell your work or make a living from weaving? If so, what does that look like and how has that affected your studio practice?

I am grateful to be able to make a living from my creative work— which is a combination of my fine-art hand weaving practice along with design consulting for the interior textiles industry. I recently left my full-time job as a textile designer at Pollack to pursue independent life. I sell my work through galleries, commissions, and occasional pop-up events. It can be very difficult timing projects when theres just one loom— I have to be strategic about what warps I put on, and leave space to experiment and come up with new ideas.

8. Where do you find inspiration?

I collect a lot of inspiration from walking around and observing—marsh grasses blowing in the wind, distorted linear shadows on sand, striations in rock, a burl of a tree that has grown through a fence— all ephemeral and tactile natural events. I look at MoMa’s 1969 “Wall Hangings” catalogue (and other mid-century books about textile art), basketry, brooms, fishing lures and maritime history, vernacular architecture, contemporary art. I also get inspired by the process of making itself and the element of surprise that occurs when working with unruly and unconventional materials.

9. What other creatives do you admire – weavers, artists, entrepreneurs – and why?

Diane Scherer: Look up her Exercises in Root System Domestication— she explores the relationship of man versus his natural environment and his desire to control nature.

Francoise Grossen: Her rope sculptures evoke a visceral reaction that transforms fiber from being “weak and feminine” to being powerful and monumental. I love this quote by her— “the beauty of the material pre-exists and I try to make the material assert itself to the fullest degree, in almost an intellectual manner.”

Of course there’s Lenore Tawney, Sheila Hicks, Annie Albers– female pioneers in the assertion of weaving as 'higher art’.

10. If you could no longer weave, what would you do instead?

I’d probably go back to school and get a sculpture MFA.

Do you have any upcoming exhibits, talks, or events the community should know about?

September 7th - Thanksgiving: Exhibiting new works at M.Patmos clothing store, Brooklyn 

September 20th-October 9th: Construction, a two person show with William Storms at Russell Janis, Brooklyn