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Brigitte Clavette
Brigitte Clavette, RCA
Silversmith Brigitte Clavette was the Head of the Jewellery and Metal Arts Studio at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design in Fredericton from 1985 to 2020, and continues to teach to the present day. She has also taught at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, the Nunavut Arctic College, the Haliburton School of Arts and the Community College of New Brunswick in Dieppe. Her hollow ware and silver works have been shown internationally and are held in private and public collections across the country and internationally, including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, England, the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto, and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. Clavette became an elected member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 2000. She won the Excellence Award for Craft from the Province of NB in 2002, the prestigious Strathbutler Award in 2006 and the national Saidye Bronfman Award in 2022.
Brigitte created the teapot (above) “Le Coq”, for an exhibition called “Celebration”. The exhibition was in honour of Brigitte’s longtime friend and mentor, Lois Betteridge, who was celebrating her 80th birthday. Subsequently, the teapot was accepted as part of a juried exhibition "Unity and Diversity" at the Cheongju International Craft Biennale (2009) in South Korea. The exhibition was curated by Dr. Sandra Alfoldy for the Canadian Craft Federation. Out of 200 pieces in the “Unity and Diversity” exhibition, 50 were selected for a special exhibition at the Museum of Vancouver, “The Art of Craft”, presented with the 2010 Cultural Olympiad in Vancouver. And finally the teapot has been purchased for the permanent collection of the very prestigious Royal Ontario Museum.
Brigitte Clavette is the 2022 Saidye Bronfman Award Winner.
Watch Jennifer Pazienza's Gotta Minute? episode with Brigitte below:
Artist Statement
Audial/Aerial
Creating Jewellery and small sculptures, I am interested in where these objects "live" or are housed. Frames, boxes and small plinths are places where these objects often reside. I am concerned with creating support systems that offer visual and physical balance.
My use of watercolour as an abstract background for "Rouge", "Bleu" and "Noir", is a reference to cartography. The pendants, like satellite dishes contain tools of my trade, ordinary polishing buffs. These have been dyed and are embedded in acrylic, like specimens from outer space. The rubber cord creates a graphic line connecting the dish to the map.
