Nod to Helena by Brigitte Clavette
Artist Statement: "Nod to Helena"
My fascination for the Graham Sutherland’s portrait of Helena Rubinstein in the permanent collection of the Beaverbrook Art Gallery started roughly fifteen years ago when I was asked to help during a fundraiser.
Since then, often when visiting the gallery, I drop by to visit her and ask a passerby to take a photo. I will invite the photographer to guide me in the pose, where my eyes should look. As I age, I think I look more and more like her.
This spring, my opportunity to have an artist residency at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery inspired me to develop a body of work for this exhibition. I decided on a design challenge focused and inspired mostly by Helena’s dress. This meant working with colour. Through the exploration of copper enameling, I created a retro inspired collection that, in my mind, may have been commissioned by Helena herself. I hear she collected melamine or Lucite, so perhaps she would have enjoyed this playfulness inspired by her dress.
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.
