You are invited to step into the four decades that shaped Brigitte Clavette’s metalsmithing career to date. From joy to grief to revival, her award-winning work has moved countless art lovers, curators, and collectors from across Canada and beyond. Clavette’s dedication to sharing knowledge and building up generations of artists and craftspeople is seen across her extensive teaching career. The former studio head and longtime instructor of New Brunswick College of Craft and Design’s Jewellery/Metal Arts program, Clavette is an iconic and beloved figure on campus who retired in the spring of 2026.
In addition to her solo practice and her dedicated and tireless work as an educator, Clavette’s leadership in artist collectives has helped shape the provincial craft landscape. Following in the footsteps of her mentor, Lois Etherington-Betteridge, she co-founded Metal Six, a powerhouse collective of women metal artists in New Brunswick.
Join the college in honouring her legacy and celebrating the immense practice she has forged.
Opening on Thursday, August 20 from 4:30-6pm at the George Fry Gallery, this exhibition is for everyone. The opening reception will include light refreshments, guest speakers, a short video, and an opportunity to meet the artist and experience a body of work curated through contemplation.
Contemplation will be open to the public from August 20 to September 29, 2026, Monday to Friday, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., at the George Fry Gallery. Admission is free.
Gradually broadening her technical palette has enabled her to explore a world of emotions, atmospheres, and personal rituals. Often eschewing the untouchable, more precious mirror finish of earlier years, these new pieces are presented in conversation with various castings and painterly surfaces, either on a table or on a wall.
Title: “Untitled”
Date: circa 1980
Medium: Sterling silver, slate, gold leaf, cork
“The artist has combined her various materials in a way that makes sense both materially and emotionally. A silver chalice filled with iron nails (Sacred Ambiguity), a de-constructed vessel reconstructed as a ‘sacred heart’ (“Radiating Confidence”), and a silver incense burner pierced by nails (“Sacrifice”) all share a common thread the communication of ideas and emotions held together by beauty. But as Clavette has made achingly clear, the beauty has thorns, its presence can soothe but it can tear when taken away. There is no avoiding the emotive power of these objects, no way of side-stepping the pain, the longing, the rage. That is their strength and their grace. Clavette, raised as a Roman Catholic, now a student of Buddhism, has combined the symbols of both faiths in Memoria. As befits our times, she has done so with a secular disregard for theological orthodoxy and an artistic preference for the spiritual...It is religious also, because at its base-despite the sadness, anger, and hints of despair-the work is hopeful. It rages against light’s death and celebrates the fact that light will never truly die. It will always be reflected back at us, the living, who are surrounded by its glow. From death-life; from despair-hope; what could be more human?”
Ray Cronin
Title: “Untitled”
Date: 2002
Medium: Sterling silver, 14k gold, crystal
This collection was crafted specifically to represent iconography, vessels, and practices represented in the Catholic faith. The piece “Mirror” was made to reflect vanity during the ablution ritual. This piece, along with others in the Ex-voto collection, travelled to Japan to be put on display, and continued to tour internationally. This collection was later exhibited in the first Canadian Craft Museum.
Title: “Mirror”
Medium: Sterling silver, lapis lazuli
“These textured ‘silver skins’ are meant to be held in the palm of the hand, eschewing the untouchable mirror finish of previous work. Currently in the production of new works for a solo exhibition, the NB Museum 2020, Futile Abundance showcases the challenges of food insecurity, food waste, constant decay and perceived value of material...Tabletop trays or platters carry inks on paper onto which compositions of silver and bronze are created.”
Brigitte Clavette
“Clavette’s work in this exhibition expands on her recent series of metallic interpretations of “skins”, redeeming elements of discarded foodstuffs by casting them in silver...by casting food as silver integuments and then arranging them around an empty vessel, Clavette critiques the notion of the beautifully decorative silver utilitarian object as a centerpiece that attracts gourmands, reminding us of the absurdity of chasing and hammering a precious metal. Clavette’s art resides in the language of delicacy and illogic, framed through the interaction of taste and sight.”
Tom Smart
BEAVERBROOK ART GALLERY
“Clavette is an alchemist turning things we waste into actual silver...her intention with this work is to create an atmosphere or feeling of wealth and opulence-of attraction and repulsion.”
Matthew Brown
CBC FILMMAKER
Title: “Lifeline”
Date: 2020
Medium: Sterling silver, horse hair, ink on paper
Brigitte Clavette is a renowned contemporary metalsmith, passionate teacher, respected mentor, member of the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts, and a Saidye Bronfman Award recipient (2022) for excellence in fine craft—Canada's most prestigious Governor General’s Award for fine craftsmanship in visual and media arts.
She received the Excellence Award and The Strathbutler Award from the province of New Brunswick, and was a 2026 shortlist candidate for the Robert Jekyll Award. Her work is included in the permanent collections of: The National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa, ON), Canadian Museum of History (Gatineau, QC), Royal Ontario Museum (Toronto, ON), Victoria & Albert Museum (London, UK), Beaverbrook Art Gallery (Fredericton, NB), New Brunswick Museum (Saint John, NB), and in the Art Gallery of Guelph (ON) contemporary silversmithing collection.
Brigitte devoted her career to studio practice and giving back to the next generation of metal artists as an instructor and former studio head at New Brunswick College of Craft & Design (Fredericton, NB) from 1985 to 2026; and as an instructor at New Brunswick Community College (Dieppe, NB), Nunavut Arctic College (Iqaluit, NU), Haliburton School of the Arts (ON), Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (Halifax, NS), Honeybee Folk School (Fredericton, NB), and Sunbury Shores Arts and Nature Center (Saint Andrews, NB).
