Knitting for pleasure is often associated with the production of sweaters and blankets for babies. It is a hobby for women.
For Katharine Cobey, an artist who resides in Cushing, knitting is an art form, a means of creating pieces that speak to everyone’s hearts and minds.
Cobey’s blue eyes pierce the fog’s gloom as she animatedly discusses her love of fiber arts. “I use clothing to say something else. I have to make them talk.” Cobey creates sculptures through wearable pieces, hanging pieces, masks and more, through knitting.
Cobey makes her art in a red barn that faces her house and stands parallel to the Meduncook River. Light pours in through large windows that span over half of the western wall and face the water. Cobey’s husband, David, built the spruce barn when they moved to the Cushing countryside in 1992.
The barn is not only a place to knit. It is also a place for Cobey to share her knitted pieces with the public. It is her art gallery. Although the temporary closing of the bridge leading to Friendship has slowed traffic past her house, Cobey says her art brings in people from near and far.
The barn’s view of the river is breathtaking, but Cobey says that its beauty alone does not inspire her art. The river is too vast, and its beauty too immense to be the focus of her artwork. However, themes from the river have found their way into her sculptural pieces, such as the Boat With Four Figures.
The four wooden figures are poles with carved heads that are devoid of features. They wear a veil from a single knitted piece that spans all four figures. In the original installation, the figures stood in a boat formed by a knitted blanket in an abstract boat formation. The four figures from the boat now reside in the barn. The figures form a circle with their faces directed toward each other as if they are communing. The knitted veil drapes over their heads and shoulders.
The barn’s interior displays Cobey’s fiber artwork. A spinning wheel rests from its duties spinning dark grey wool “in the grease,” which means the wool has not been treated after it is sheared from the sheep. Cobey creates her pieces with homespun wool, and all her designs are original. Next to the wheel is Cobey’s pink chair, which looks like a seashell, and in front of this chair are knitting needles holding white wool that is beginning to take on shape.
It seems improbable that Cobey could make a living designing and creating pieces of art through knitting. And that is true. Cobey’s work is not lucrative. But the creative process has a value of its own. “We get torn between practical realities and making money to eat. But if no one made art, we’d be in trouble. Then, maybe we’d start to pay our artists.”
For Cobey, 73, art is a way of life that inspires and excites her.
Pulling out books about fiber arts, Cobey shares work by amateurs who create pieces that are not artwork, but a craft. And therein lies the difference between the two creative outlets. “A good crafts person doesn’t consciously make sculpture,” Cobey explains. “This is because she is not asking of her craft what she can.”
It was the fiber artist Magdelena Abakanowicz, a Polish artist, who inspired Cobey. Abakanowicsz weaves enormous pieces of art that share a thought or an idea. While viewing her work in a second-hand book, Cobey realized that fiber art “can be done.”
Although artistic inspiration causes a person to experiment with art, real resolve develops after a person learns her trade, says Cobey. She learned to knit when she was 11. At that age she did not know that fiber art existed. She created clothing through patterns.
Along with describing her personal introduction to knitting, Cobey explained the history of knitting among women in the United States.
Once, both men and women knitted, for it was a necessity of life, producing clothing and even fishing nets. After the Industrial Revolution, women knitted to either make or save a few dollars for their families. But as time progressed, machines improved and took over the production of knitted pieces. People could no longer produce pieces better or faster than machines. Knitting became a hobby for women.
Although men respect women and their hobbies, as Cobey explains, “If something becomes what women do, it drops in prestige. Weaving is more prestigious because both men and women weave. Knitting makes baby clothes. It is pretty and decorative.”
Cobey believes that if women began to say, “I could make something expressive, real and wonderful,” they could. Knitting is as much a creative outlet as painting or sculpture and deserves its own respect as an art form, she argues.
Cobey did not expect to pursue fiber arts as a career. In college she majored in English literature and wrote poetry. Her interest in knitting was propelled forward after she became physically injured. To break the monotony of reading and writing during recovery, she knit.
It was then that Cobey’s career changed forever. Realizing that knitting could become her passion, “I thought, there is no reason I couldn’t knit as seriously as I had written, except fear and lack of knowledge. If I could knit better than I could write, I decided it was worth a try.” This switch happened in 1978, and Cobey has been knitting ever since.
Describing her unusual and fruitful career, Cobey proudly thinks of herself as a risk-taker. “People love it when you say you’re a writer, but people do not think you’re the cat’s meow when you say ‘I’m a knitter’.” By taking risks and breaking stereotypes, Cobey hopes she has paved the way for other knitters who wish to create sculptural pieces that speak to people.
Cobey shares her knowledge about fiber arts in a book that was published in fall 2010 by Schoolhouse Press and is called, Diagonal Knitting: A Different Slant
A wistful look passes over Cobey’s face as she contemplates why she loves knitting. Sitting on the floor surrounded by knitting books, Cobey says, “If I think very hard about things and put them into a piece…, and I see people respond to it intellectually and emotionally, then it reaffirms our connectedness.” There is one other aspect of her work that gives Cobey great satisfaction: “It’s fun.”
For more information visit http://www.katharinecobey.com/
Kate Hynd is a resident of Thomaston and a participant in The Working Waterfront’s Student Writing Program.