Africa is on the opposite side of the planet from New Brunswick, but a farming family in Florenceville is helping create awareness about the continent's AIDS crisis with a three-hectare work of art. 

Chip Hunter has built a giant maze from 280,000 corn stalks in a field on his farm in central New Brunswick. From above, it is an image of a grandmother holding her orphaned grandchild with a map of Africa above her.

A farmer in Florenceville, N.B., built a maze to resemble an African grandmother holding her orphaned grandchild in support of the fight against AIDS.

The corn maze is a Hunter family tradition, and the design changes every year. This year, Hunter was inspired by impassioned pleas from Stephen Lewis, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, for help to end the AIDS crisis there. 

With this week's 16th international conference in Toronto, the corn farmer says he felt the maze would be the biggest statement he could make in support of Lewis's efforts.

"Because of him, he's inspired us," Hunter said. "The grandmothers in Africa, their plight is that their children have died from AIDS and have left orphans. And these orphans have nowhere to go, so they get brought up by their grandmothers. In one case there's a grandmother raising 30 children. It's a pandemic, of epic proportions, and it needs to be addressed."

Florenceville farmer Chip Hunter was inspired by Stephen Lewis's campaign against AIDS.

The maze is also an interactive educational tool with a quest hidden among the corn stalks. Visitors progress through the maze by finding answers to 10 multiple choice questions pertaining to AIDS in Africa.

Hunter is charging admission to the maze, and some of the money collected will go to the Stephen Lewis Foundation's grandmothers' campaign. It will help buy coffins so they can bury the mothers and fathers who die from AIDS, and help feed and clothe the children they leave behind.