Metal Six+2

Title: Spoons

Gallery: City Gallery

Dates: Opening October 30th

Artist statement

SPOONS: An exhibition by Metal Six + Two

Spoons is the fifth exhibition by Metal Six, a collective of New Brunswick metalsmiths: Brigitte Clavette, Kristyn Cooper, Kristen Bishop, Kristianne Levesque, Erica Stanley, and Audrée H. St-Amour. For this exhibition, they are joined by guest artists Alanna Baird and Mary K. McIntyre.

In Spoons, the artists reimagine one of our most familiar objects. The spoon—a vessel for nourishment, care, and connection—becomes a means to explore how we live within both the natural and the human-made worlds. These works draw on the forms and materials of the everyday: metal shaped by hand, touched by fire, marked by colour and texture. Some evoke growth and renewal; others speak to depletion or fragility.

Together, they suggest that even the simplest act—to hold, to feed, to share—carries layers of meaning. In their hands, the spoon becomes not only a tool, but a meditation on giving and receiving, and on what it means to care for one another and for the world around us.

ARTIST STATEMENTS

Kristen Bishop: The Weight – Spoon Theory

Kristen Bishop works with steel plates to give form to the Spoon Theory—a metaphor that describes how energy is measured and spent in daily life, particularly for those living with chronic illness or limited resources. By altering the surfaces of steel through patina, repetition, and texture, Bishop transforms an industrial material into a record of both strength and depletion, resilience and fragility. Her work translates an invisible reality into physical form, giving weight to what is often unseen.

Brigitte Clavette: Play With Your Food

The spoon is the most utilitarian of the utensils on a dinner table. Its concave shell-like form can scoop, separate and cut into most foods, especially when the edge is well worn. The fork and knife are more limited. “Play with your food” is an on-going collection that invite the user to imagine the purpose and function of each spoon. The spoon can carry so much meaning when a remedy is offered, or perhaps a shared last drop of sweet nectar. The ambiguous nature of some of my spoons invite contemplation on pure functionality, service, ceremony, ritual, healing and nurturing.

Kristyn Cooper: Spoon Hybrids

This series is a collection of hybrid objects, part utensil, part organism. While they recall the familiar form of a spoon, they resist function, slipping instead into the territory of specimens, entities, and creatures. Their shapes suggest both flora and fauna, as though they might be living, growing, or writhing when left unattended. Each piece seems caught between being collected, grown, or imagined. Catalogued and displayed, they suggest belonging to a taxonomy we do not yet understand.

These objects combine sterling silver and colored acrylic, a material pairing that heightens the tension between the natural and the artificial. The silver bowls carry a skin-like, almost reptilian texture that feels slightly unsettling, even repellent, when imagined against the mouth. In contrast, the acrylic stems are bright, and almost candy-like, their smooth surfaces inviting touch and taste.

Are they ritual tools, waiting for a ceremony not yet imagined? Or are they simply alive, indifferent to our questions of purpose? Their presence lingers in the space between the curious and the uncanny, between what is found and what is fabricated.

Erica Stanley: Long Spoons

Drawing inspiration from the “Allegory of the Long Spoon,” I have created a series of elongated spoons that explore interdependence, generosity, and ecological care. Each piece is crafted from enameled copper paired with wooden handles sourced from trees in the forest I tend — a material collaboration between metal, fire, and place.

The enamel surfaces are coloured in response to the vivid palette of my garden: the deep greens of kale leaves, the soft blush of ripening apples, the jewel tones of late-summer flowers. These colours serve as reminders of the nourishment the land offers when we care for it in return.

The spoons themselves are intentionally impractical if used alone. Their exaggerated length insists that true sustenance — both emotional and physical — depends on our willingness to reach outward. In shaping these objects, I reflect not only on care between people, but also on our reciprocal relationship with the land. The forest provides the handle; the fire fuses the enamel; the garden offers its colours — this work could not exist without all three.

Audrée H. St-Amour: Fed

As a Verb (Past Tense of “feed”):

To give food to: “The children were fed breakfast before school”.
To supply with necessities or fuel: “The new engine is fed with a powerful fuel”.
To satisfy or gratify: “Poetry feeds the imagination”.
To supply material to a machine: “He fed paper into the printer”.

In a series of sensual yet uncomfortable spoons, Fed explores the complexities of dysfunctional relationships. Fed plays with the contrast between the intended function of the object, in spoons that would cause inevitable pain if used.

Alanna Baird: Spoonbait

My work is based on spoonbait fishing lures. Using recycled tinned copper and embellishing with beads, I am playing on the words Lure and Alluring. Shiny sparkles to attract the eye. Adding some femininity to fishing. As women often dress for attention, these ‘lures’ are all dolled up, but can also be lethal.

Mary K. McIntyre: All can eat / Can all eat

Fragments gathered from rivers, ravines, and waterfronts, reworked into spoons—means by which we can feed ourselves and each other.

Disparate materials that are broken and alienated: shards of brick and glass, aluminum and plastic; silver-plated cutlery fallen from the tables where they once served. The water offers stone, bone, and feather; bark and branches stripped apart by the current. Alone, these fragments speak of fracture and displacement. But craft proposes new meanings, with new connections raised, forged, and fabricated.

Craft embodies tradition and carries narrative. It knows that objects contain memory and meaning, and the shard of one story holds the seed of a new one. Craft does not mask a fracture—it opens the crack that allows new growth.

Each spoon acknowledges damage yet gestures toward restoration, and the offer of nourishment: of the body, of memory, of our bonds with land, water, and each other.

Artist Biographies

MEMBERS OF METAL SIX

Kristen Bishop

Kristen Bishop is a metalsmith from Fredericton, New Brunswick, and a maker at heart. Drawn to her material, she works intuitively, guided by its strength, texture, and ability to transform. Her process of creation involves a gathering of things and thoughts. Inspired by the lines, colors, and textures of ordinary objects often overlooked, Kristen finds beauty in the subtle and the imperfect.

Her practice spans from exploring the expressive potential of steel plates to creating jewelry that carries the same sense of movement and connection. Through both forms, she investigates the balance between the industrial and the intimate, resilience and grace.

Her award-winning work has been exhibited in galleries across Canada and included in numerous juried and invitational group exhibitions.

Brigitte Clavette

Head of Jewellery/Metal Arts and instructor at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design from 1985 to 2017, Brigitte Clavette currently teaches part-time and devotes herself to her artistic practice. She is the 2022 winner of the Saidye Bronfman Award for excellence in fine crafts (one of the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts) and a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of the Arts. She has received the Excellence Award and The Strathbutler Award from the province of New Brunswick. 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) as well as the Art Gallery of Guelph (ON) Contemporary Silversmithing Collection.

Over the years, Brigitte has given workshops and taught at the New Brunswick Community College (Dieppe, NB), Nunavut Arctic College (Iqaluit, NU), Haliburton School of the Arts (ON), Nova Scotia College of Art and Design (Halifax, NS) and at the Sunbury Shores Arts and Nature Center (Saint Andrews, NB).

Brigitte Clavette’s current work challenges functionality. 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.

Kristyn Cooper

Kristyn Cooper is a metalsmith and educator based in New Brunswick. She studied Jewellery/Metal Arts at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design and is currently completing a Master of Adult Education at the University of New Brunswick. Her work has been recognized nationally and internationally, with highlights including participation in the Cheongju International Craft Biennale in South Korea, service as a jury member for the Canada Council for the Arts, grants from the New Brunswick Arts Board, and participation in exhibitions across Canada.

Since 2017, Cooper has led the Jewellery/Metal Arts studio at NBCCD, supporting students in developing personal relationships with metal while emphasizing creativity, craftsmanship, and technical skill. She encourages a balance of curiosity and discipline in the studio, helping students explore materials, techniques, and forms while supporting their individual artistic voices.

In her own practice, Cooper creates one-of-a-kind and limited-edition pieces that combine inventive color, thoughtful material exploration, and appealing surface treatments. The dialogue between teaching and making is central to her work: engaging with students’ ideas continually inspires her approach, while her own experimentation informs the guidance she offers in the studio.

Audrée H .St-Amour

Audrée H .St-Amour is a craft artist whose practice wanders between production and art jewellery, and sculptural objects. Her work has a distinct aesthetic rich in composition with the use of different design elements and materials. Audrée’s colourful and playful pieces engage and intrigue the viewer with the often unusual, natural and discarded materials she uses to challenge material value and beauty.

Audrée studied visual arts in Montreal, QC, and was then introduced to jewellery making while traveling through Mexico and Central America. After her travels, she took foundational jewellery courses at École de joaillerie de Montreal. In 2010, she moved to New Brunswick and pursued her studies at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design (NBCCD) to earn a Diploma in Fine Craft/Jewellery, and then a Bachelor of Applied Arts, from the University of New Brunswick (UNB). She has developed her artistic practice while also working as an arts professional teaching jewellery and visual arts to elementary school, college and adult students, and now as Communications Officer at The New Brunswick Arts Board.

Audrée has received grants from the New Brunswick Arts Board (artsnb) and Canada Council for the Arts and has exhibited her work nationally and internationally. In 2024, she received the Sheila Hugh McKay Foundation’s Emerging Artisan Award. Her production jewellery is sold in galleries in New Brunswick, Ontario and Alberta. She lives and practices in Fredericton, New Brunswick.

Erica Stanley

Erica Stanley is an artist, goldsmith, educator, entrepreneur, and arts advocate living along the beautiful Wolastoq River, in New Brunswick. Stanley’s artistic practice serves as a means of experiencing, understanding, and honouring the natural world around her. She creates fine jewellery, metal sculptures, as well as large-scale installations, and has shown in various galleries including the Beaverbrook Art Gallery. Stanley and her husband, Aidan, run Queenstown Goldsmiths where they specialize in custom wedding and engagement rings.

As a homesteader and avid gardener, she grows the food that partially sustains her family all year round. Stanley takes great inspiration from the garden and aims to share with others the simplicity and rewarding nature of gardening. She has taught goldsmithing at the Nunavut Arctic College and currently is a Studio Head of Entrepreneurship at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design (NBCCD), as well as a Jewellery Instructor. Stanley holds a Bachelor of Applied Arts from the University of New Brunswick, as well as a Diploma in Fine Craft and a Diploma of Advanced Studies from NBCCD.

INVITED ARTISTS

Alanna Baird

Alanna Baird lives in Saint Andrews, New Brunswick where she maintains a material based artistic practice, working primarily in metal sculpture. She completed 3 years of Mechanical Engineering (UNB) before studying Ceramics (NB Craft School).

In 2022 she was awarded the Eidlitz Award for Integration of Natural Sciences and the Arts by Sunbury Shores Arts & Nature Centre, in celebration of her work which exhibits a profound appreciation and understanding of the harmony between the natural sciences and the arts. She was also the recipient of the Margaret Woodson Nae Fellowship from the Sheila Hugh McKay Foundation. Alanna’s work in plastic that was inspired by her residency with the Students on Ice Foundation’s 2022 Ocean Conservation Expedition was exhibited at IMPAC5 (5th International Marine Protected Areas Conference) in Vancouver (2023).

Alanna won a Canadian National Sculpture Competition (2014) and has received three Arts NB Creation A grants towards new work. Alanna has had solo Canadian exhibitions and participated in group exhibitions in the United States, Australia and Bermuda. Her Public Art Commissions are in Alberta, Ontario, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick. Alanna is also an accomplished printmaker and has participated in an international printmaking portfolio for exhibition at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Centre’s conference Altered Environments (USA 2023).

The first work she created in recycled tin was featured by the American Crafts Council in celebration of 1993, The Year of Craft in North America. Alanna’s iconic tin fish have since become an invasive species scattered through private collections, globally speaking their messages of environmental concerns.

Mary K McIntyre

Mary K. McIntyre is a Toronto-based artist and metalsmith, a descendant of ironworkers who built bridges in Canada and battleships in Scotland. This lineage of making has shaped her own thirty-year engagement with metal. Her sculpture and functional art are rooted in the strength and fragility of the city’s rivers, ravines, and waterfront; they explore the tensions between natural and industrial terrains, and the interlacing of memory, materiality, and landscape.

McIntyre’s work is represented in the National Capital Commission Official Residences Crown Collection and the Canadian Contemporary Silver Collection at the Art Gallery of Guelph. Alongside her studio practice, she has curated and juried for Craft Ontario, L.A. Pai Gallery, and the Canadian Student Silversmithing Exhibition. She teaches silversmithing and the social and cultural history of craft at OCAD University, Material Arts & Design Program.