On Saturday, October 5, the Farnsworth Art Museum in downtown Rockland, Maine, will open an exhibition of works by fiber artist Katharine Cobey entitled Katharine Cobey: A Different Voice. A preview will be celebrated at a free, community event on Friday, October 4, from 5 – 8 p.m. as part of First Friday at the Farnsworth sponsored by First National Bank. The exhibition will be on view in the museum’s Rothschild Gallery through April 12, 2020.

Cushing, Maine fiber artist Katharine Cobey builds three-dimensional forms by knitting with unusual fibers, metal wires, and plastics. Her stitches give shape to her viewpoints, integrating and shaping magical costumes or emblems of memory and loss. She started knitting when she was eleven as she watched her grandmother. Not until after she had become a published poet and had raised a family did she return to knitting on another level, using the process as a means toward building sculptural forms. Knitting for Cobey over time has become a vehicle to express feelings and to comment upon sometimes difficult social issues that she once articulated through her poetry.

The preview, on Friday, October 4, from 5 – 8 is part of the Maine Craft Weekend tour. More information about this tour is available at Mainecraftweekend.org 

In conjunction with this exhibition, Katharine Cobey will give a talk on Saturday, October 5, at 2 p.m. The fee is $15 and $10 for Farnsworth members, which includes gallery admission. The exhibition is sponsored in part by Hampton Inn & Suites (Rockland/Thomaston, ME). For more information please visit at www.farnsworthmuseum.org.