Myranda Gillies and Bailey Salisbury are Warp Weft Woof.
Tell me a little bit about your project, Warp Weft Woof?
B: WARP WEFT WOOF! is A fabric house, a design collaborative, and a research studio.
M: We develop textiles using a variety of methods; screen printing, hand weaving to industrial Jacquard weaving, and now Jacquard knitting. Further, we make objects and garments out of our fabric.
What is the origin of the name?
B: I came up with the name during the summer of 08, before I met Myranda, before the company started. I was reading Aram Saroyan’s anthology of minimal poems. It was unlike a lot of other concrete poetry I had come across before, which maybe emphasized the visual or phonetic but to me often lacked content. Saroyan’s poems were sharp and witty sentiments. Little miniatures of a joke. I’m also obsessed with miniatures. So it got me thinking about language in this way and I ended up weaving a tapestry with the words WARP WEFT WOOF! So, to answer your question warp and weft are common weaving terms for the longitudinal and latitudinal lines that make up a woven cloth and woof is archaic for weft, it is also the sound that a dog makes. WARP WEFT WOOF! Nobody can say it, it’s great.
M: Yeah, “www,” has a real ring to it.
How did the two of you start working together?
B: We met in the weaving studio at SAIC, and bonded over food, music and the west coast.
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on?
M: We are currently working on a collaboration with Pia Howell of Colorgram as well as one with Joel Dean but…. you’ll have to check back for that.
B: We also just finished our 2011 Calendar and we bought our first loom. It’s a four harness Macomber. We’re stoked!
What do you do when you’re not weaving?
B: umm…
So, what have you been listening to lately?
B: A friend of mine just turned me on to this band, The Art Museums, from San Francisco. They write pop songs about modernism.
M: I’ve been listening to Ed Askew, Bill Fay, Brian Eno and a lot of Fleetwood Mac.
B: I’m actually really glad you asked this question, Pop music is really important to us. You know the relationship that people have with music is so personal. A song can evoke so many memories and emotions. We wish we could create that kind of connection with our objects and the people who own them. Our recently released book Bedrooms is secretly indexed with song titles and lyrics. The first room titled, “She lies in waterfalls of dreams, doesn’t question what it means,” is a line from a Kevin Ayers song, Decadence, about Nico.
M: Yeah. Each room embodies the sentiment we found in these songs.
B: Totally, the Ayers song for us represents a youthful desire to move forward with out hesitation or disbelief. The imagery in that room actually came to me in a dream. Well, it’s more of an interpretation of the dream.
M: Or like the room/chapter “I’m gonna meet you on the astral plane,” is obviously taken from the Jonathan Richman song. Listening to Jonathan Richman was one of our first bonding moments. He sort of exemplifies this idea that we talk about, of taking on the qualities of one’s environment. He has a lot of songs about the east coast but now lives in San Francisco. His creative evolution can be marked by the places he has lived. As nomadic transplants we can both identify with this, both being from the west coast and now living in Brooklyn and meeting in Chicago.
What kind of things are influencing your work right now?
B: Sex
M: Magik
What are you reading right now?
M: well, I’ve been reading a couple of cynical books about love. I’m finishing up The Elementary Particles, by Michel Houellebecq, a racy novel, that examines the struggles of loving in contemporary society. As well as Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse, which really demonstrates that the lover’s experience through language, while seemingly a personal and individual one can actually be broken down into a universal and timeless code.
B: I recently got some back issues of Pin-Up magazine. I’ve been really into architecture theory lately, mostly sixties, Utopian thinkers. I’ve been reading some Buckmister Fuller, Shelter by Lloyd Kahn, and A Pattern Language by Christopher Alexander – a sort of text book/work book for building from city planning to interiors. It’s really about creating a living human environment and defining a notion of home.
If you could go anywhere in the world where would you go and why?
B: Barcelona 2011 for ITMA.
M: AKA, the Olympics of the textile and garment machinery industry. Held every four years.
Uh, OK. So, what are your astrological signs?
B: Cancer
M: Aries
B: Our birth dates our very close so we share many of the same planets in our natal charts, this allows us to meet on the astral plane.