Flora III
June 19 – August 22, 2026
Flora III
Featuring Judy Blake, Vincent Briggs, Cat Candow, Brigitte Clavette, Caoife Garvey, Alexa Jaffurs, Heather Peacock, Adam McNamara, Caroline Simpson, and Ralph Simpson.
Launch: Friday, June 19, 6:30pm
End: Saturday, August 22
Flora III brings together a group of award-winning artists from New Brunswick and Nova Scotia whose work explores the theme of nature and plant life across a range of craft disciplines. Working in wood, iron, plant fibre, clay, glass, textiles, and fine metals, the artists create pieces that reflect both individual approaches and shared inspiration drawn from the natural world.
The exhibition highlights the social and artistic connections between these makers, illustrating how material, process, and environment intersect in contemporary craft practices. Flora III celebrates a collective reverence for nature while showcasing the breadth and excellence of fine craft in Atlantic Canada.
Featuring work by Judy Blake, Vincent Briggs, Cat Candow, Brigitte Clavette, Caoife Garvey, Alexa Jaffurs, Heather Peacock, Adam McNamara,Caroline Simpson, and Ralph Simpson, Flora III will be on view from June 19 through August 22 at AX.
About the artists
Adam McNamara
(he/him) is a wood artist known for his unique approach to wood carving, drawing inspiration from the natural world and modern design elements. Employing power carving and fine carving techniques, he achieves realistic detail, resembling intricate paintings in wood. His creative process is deeply rooted in the world outside, particularly local ecosystems and hidden treasures within them. Influenced by anatomical drawings from Darwin’s era and the impressionism movement in painting, he infuses his pieces with themes of appreciating small creatures that hold our ecosystems together. Adam’s accolades include multiple exhibitions both locally and internationally, charity campaigns, and competitions over the years, with recent collaborations include a commission by Timberland Canada for hurricane relief in Nova Scotia. Adam prioritizes sustainability by sourcing wood from forests or purchasing scraps from woodworkers, repurposing all scrap to minimize waste. His self-taught journey pushes boundaries, with each piece serving as a discovery of new techniques and practices, contributing to the evolution of wood art.
Alexa Jaffurs
Alexa Jaffurs began blacksmithing in Florida in 1980. Banging on metal proved to be the perfect counterpoint to her career as a librarian. She has been moving her scrap pile northward ever since. Initially she produced small abstract sculptures for interiors. When she established Ladysmith Forge in Connecticut in 1991, she learned to make hardware suitable for 18th and 19th century buildings.
In 2006, she immigrated to Canada. Today, she and her wife live on a 125 acre farm in Mt. Hanley, Nova Scotia. Alexa forges garden sculpture and private commissions under the watchful eyes of a small flock of sheep. Her work can be seen at the Tangled Garden in Grand Pré and occasionally at the Annapolis Royal Historical Garden and, virtually, on her website: AlexaJaffurs.com
Brigitte Clavette
Head of Jewellery/Metal Arts and instructor at the New Brunswick College of Craft & 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 – NSCAD (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.
Caoife Garvey
Caoife Garvey is an Irish textile artist and designer currently living in Fredericton, New Brunswick. She specialises in weaving and felting techniques and works primarily with natural fibres such as linen, paper, wool and natural dyes. She uses thoughtfully chosen materials to create woven art pieces and fine craft accessories.
Caoife is a graduate of the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design and currently works there as an instructor in the Foundation Visual Arts and Textile Design programmes. Her work has been shown in group exhibitions around New Brunswick and she has been the recipient of an Arts NB Creation Grant and the Charlotte Glencross Scholarship offered to an artist who is progressing in their professional development.
Heather Peacock
Heather Peacock is a flameworked borosilicate glass artist born in Ontario, now living near Sussex, New Brunswick. She is entirely self-taught and at the forefront of flameworked fine glass art in Atlantic Canada. Through her work, she hopes to portray the fragility of our natural world and inspire a need for its protection.
Heather’s sculpted glass provincial and territorial floral emblems were displayed at the Beaverbrook Art Gallery, New Brunswick’s Provincial Gallery, in 2023. The recipient of the 2022 Nel Oudemans Award from the Sheila Hugh MacKay Foundation. She currently sits on the board of AX: The Arts and Culture Centre of Sussex, NB. In 2021, Heather’s glass series Shadows, a statement about the global climate crisis, was selected by Canadian Heritage and the Provincial Department of Tourism, Heritage and Culture to represent New Brunswick in a virtual exhibition at the Frankfurt Book Fair in Germany.
Judy Blake
Judy Blake is a canadian ceramic artist, originally from Toronto Judy settled in New Brunswick in the 1970’s. Judy experiments extensively with unglazed surface treatments using alternative firing techniques such as sawdust-firing, naked raku and saggar-firing. She is one of a small number of Canadians and the only ceramic artist in the Maritimes using these techniques. She has had an opportunity to influence many students as a teacher in the Ceramics Studio at the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design from 1998 to 2012 and continues to do so. Judy Blake maintains a studio practice in Lincoln, New Brunswick.
Ralph Simpson
Ralph Simpson -Nationally acclaimed Canadian plant fibre artist, Ralph Simpson has developed an innovative method of weaving and sculpting plant fibre into pleasing sculptural forms. He was raised in the fields and forests of New Brunswick along the Petitcodiac River and there developed a keen interest in plants. His personal motivation arises from a deep connection with nature and an implicit desire to promote environmental sustainability.
Currently, he resides in Fredericton working full time in his studio there. Ralph chooses to work with locally sourced, sustainable materials and forages his own plant fibres using environmentally sustainable methods. He prefers invasive, introduced, or naturalized plant species and also native plants if they are abundant. Ralph holds an MSc. from UNB in Forest Research Biology, and a Diploma in Fine Craft from NBCCD. Informed by the sciences and his acquired technical expertise his intricately woven pieces reflect the fields and forests around him.
Ralph is an award-winning artist with grants from Arts NB and Canada Council, short-listed for the Salt Springs National Art Prize (2021) and his work has been accessioned into New Brunswick’s permanent art collection (2023). He exhibits his work locally and internationally, attending residencies and giving workshops.
The flora of New Brunswick informs his work and his creative process. His designs arise from his interpretations of nature and have evolved from traditional basketry, to vessels, and botanically themed sculptures. His process results in a contemporary manifestation of his connection with plants in their natural habitat. His work varies in form and style but what resonates in all his work is an underlying investigation into ways that plant materials can be used to spark interest and insight into the natural world.
Vincent Briggs
Vincent Briggs was born in Fredericton, NB, and still lives there today. After graduating high school, he attended NBCCD for Fashion and then stayed on to study Textiles. He has done a small amount of theatrical costuming and currently works as a part-time alterations tailor while also making YouTube videos. He became interested in historical clothing around 2010 and has been sewing his own clothes for well over a decade. Some for everyday wear, some as costume or art projects, and some that fall in between. Most of his inspiration comes from historical fashion and decorative arts from various eras, and in recent years he has become interested in making clothing that looks like leaves. He loves designing clothing and learning new sewing and embellishment techniques.
Caroline Simpson
Caroline M. Simpson is a fibre artist who creates contemporary rug-hooked tapestries. She is a juried member of Craft NB, a certified member of the Teachers’ Branch of the Nova Scotia Rug Hooking Guild, and a member of several other rug hooking guilds. Her work has been published several times in Rug Hooking Magazine, an international publication, and has been exhibited at the Ice House Gallery, Sunbury Shores Arts & Nature Centre, the Andrew and Laura McCain Art Gallery, the UNB Arts Centre, Gallery 78, the Charlotte St. Arts Centre, and at Mount St. Vincent University.
Cat Candow
A seamstress by trade and passionate textile arts educator, Cat has nurtured a passion for all fiber crafts from a young age. Over the last few years her daily art practice has zeroed in on bobbin lace making. She is studying bobbin lace traditions from all over the world, learning several techniques simultaneously through online classes and creating original lace artwork. Bobbin lace is on the verge of dying out in New Brunswick and Cat’s long-term goal is to reintroduce this craft to the region and build a community of lacemakers.
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the NB Department of Tourism, Heritage and Culture for supporting this exhibition.
Call for Exhibition Proposals
Professional and emerging artists/artist teams working in all mediums are invited and encouraged to submit proposals for solo, group, or curates exhibitions. The deadline for proposal submissions for next season has passed, but we accept proposals year round for later dates.
AX is committed to developing, supporting and promoting exhibition opportunities and experiences for New Brunswick artists from established and underrepresented communities. In choosing exhibitions, AX seeks a balance of established and emerging artists, exhibiting works fro our region and beyond. AX is also dedicated to exhibiting children’s art and student work created in local-area schools and through our own programming.
AX offers an average of six exhibitions a year and strives to pay artists fair compensation for the right to exhibit their work. We include artist fees based on national CARFAC standards in all grant applications so there fees can be paid to artists whenever possible. AX’s exhibitions are selected by a rotating panel of respected artists and art educators knowledgeable in the discipline involved. The selected juries base their decisions on the artist’d statement and images submitted as part of exhibitions proposals.
While you may suggest a curator as part of your proposal, AX is under no obligation to pay this curator or work with them directly. In your proposal, please clarify if you are willing to work with a curator of AX’s choosing. If you are proposing a curator, please include their credentials along with your proposal.
All artists interested in submitting an exhibtion proposal should also refer to our sample artist agreement before submitting as it clarifies requirements assiciated with exhibiting at AX.
In your proposal, please include:
- Contact information (name, address, phone, email, website)
- Are you applying for a solo artist show, a group show, or a show you will curate?
- Title of your proposed exhibiton
- Approximate number of pieces and dimensions
- Project description (max. 500 words), including:
- artist statement
- concept for proposed exhibit
- what are you trying to achieve
- Note: If you would prefer to present your project description by video, you may upload a 2 to 3 minute (maximum) video clip to YouTube and share the link with us.
- Arts resume/CV (no more than 3 pages)
- Artist biography, including training and exhibiton history (no more than 500 words)
- 10 digital (JPG) images of work with an accompanying numbered image list specifying title, media, dimensions, and year of work. Can send images on a USB stick, through Dropbox.com or WeTransfer, or by email – website links to supplementary visual materials are also welcome. Images submitted by email must be no larger than 1024 pixels at the longest dimension, adn no more than 150 dpi.
Applications may be submitted electronically to: admin@axartscentre.ca (please include AX Exhibition Proposal int he subject line of the email). Or mailed/dropped off in person to:
AX, the Arts and Culture Centre of Sussex
12 Maple Ave., Sussex, NB E4E2N5
Preparing a proposal? Have a look at our gallery dimensions and photos for context. If you have any questions about the proposal process, contact: admin@axartscentre.ca