Bridging Strength and Sensitivity: The Sculptural World of Mia Bureau
Mia Bureau, born in 1978 in Montreal, is an artist whose early exposure to architecture and design, thanks to her parents, profoundly influenced her. Educated in an alternative school, she quickly developed skills in drawing, watercolor, and modeling. As a teenager, she found refuge in art, selling her first works and attending adult creative workshops, showcasing an early artistic maturity.
After earning a diploma in interior design at 19, her studies in environmental design and visual arts broadened her perspective, despite not being completed. In her twenties, her travels across Europe and Asia, along with becoming a mother in 2005, shaped her artistic and personal outlook.
In 2008, she launched Sculpture Culinaire Mia Bureau, a corporate event art company that merges creativity and entrepreneurship. In 2020, she returned to contemporary visual art, balancing her time between sculptures and event-based projects. Her diverse journey reflects a constant pursuit of meaning and beauty, where sincerity and innovation remain at the core of her work.
Femme-Bridge: Statement
The Femme-Bridge sculpture series draws inspiration from two main sources.
On one hand, my fascination with civil engineering structures, which combine intrinsic beauty with rich metaphorical potential as vectors of connection and transmission. On the other hand, my desire to offer a feminine perspective on the beauty of women by portraying them as strong, mature, calm, and confident. These qualities, often associated with masculine beauty, contrast with typical representations of women centered on youth, fragility, and sexualization—ideals in which I, as a woman, do not recognize myself.
My goal is to provide a counterbalance to these norms by presenting a vision of femininity that feels more authentic and empowering. The focus in my work is less on precise realism and more on capturing a sense of life and sensitivity in the figure.
The juxtaposition of female figures and bridges, the difference in their scales, and the translucent veils of colored resin all contribute to the overall vision. These elements invite viewers to reflect on the meaning of the work as a whole.
Femme-Bridge is ultimately a celebration of strength and transmission, merging visual poetry with profound symbolic depth.
Your background includes design, sculpture, and event-based art. How do those different experiences show up in your creative process today?
My background in design has always been a valuable asset—both in how I conceive, visualize, and construct my works, and in how I approach their finishing. I pay great attention to detail and strive for a clean, polished execution. That precision likely comes from my personality, but it was definitely reinforced by my design training.
My experience with event-based art has profoundly shaped how I interact with the public. It gave me a natural ease when speaking in front of people, allowed me to improvise, and helped me create a relaxed atmosphere—even when things aren’t perfect. It also strengthened my skills as a creative entrepreneur, which are essential to my journey as an artist.
Sculpture remains the primary language through which everything comes together. I often see my sculptures fully formed in my imagination, in three dimensions, even before I start sketching. I bring that same spatial awareness to my paintings, although they begin as two-dimensional drawings on paper. For my sculptures, I also create sketches—first, to guide the pose of my models, and second, to build a scaled plan with precise dimensions.
What inspired the Femme-Bridge series? How did the idea of combining bridges and the female form first come to you?
The Femme-Bridge series began with a powerful mental image: a nude, full-bodied woman trapped inside the frame of an electrical pylon. Her flesh slightly spilled through the rigid lines of the metal structure. That vision came to me suddenly, unprompted — and at the same time, I was hearing a line from a Patrick Watson song echoing in my mind: “You put a big bird in a cage too small for it to sing its song.”
That combination of image and music perfectly captured what I was feeling emotionally at the time.
After having children, my body had changed significantly. I had always been very slim, and I found it difficult to accept this new version of myself. I was incredibly self-critical.
My creative process often stems from a need to make work that feels emotionally meaningful and healing. In that same headspace, another image appeared: a woman lying or resting on a steel lattice bridge. That image deeply moved me. It evoked strength, serenity, and a different kind of beauty — one that felt grounded and unapologetic.
I sensed a powerful symbolic potential in that vision, something worth exploring through a series. That’s how Femme-Bridge was born: out of a desire to reconcile softness and strength, vulnerability and resilience, and to express a vision of feminine beauty that feels embodied, powerful, and alive. And the series is still ongoing… it continues to open new creative paths for me.
You’ve spoken about wanting to shift how women are represented in art. What does strength and beauty mean to you in this context?
I believe the beauty of these women radiates from within. It’s a powerful beauty—born from the love they’ve received, the love they give, their confidence, their dreams, and the deep inner knowing that they already carry everything they need to one day make those dreams come true. They know they can rely on themselves to get there.
It’s also a beauty that embraces imperfection, that doesn’t try to hide but instead honors what is real. A beauty that loves itself.
This inner strength is echoed visually through the structure of the bridge: rigid, massive, grounded, yet also delicate and intricate in its latticework. When you see these women’s bodies resting on or against these steel structures, you might ask yourself—metaphorically—which of the two is stronger, more resilient, more beautiful.
My definition of beauty acts as a counterpoint to dominant standards that prioritize extreme thinness, symmetrical perfection, and hypersexualization. I try to offer something else: women depicted in their full maturity, their humanity, their complexity. Women who are confident, and who embody both softness and strength.
Can you walk us through how one of your sculptures comes to life—from concept to materials to final piece?
Let’s take sculpture No.3 from my Femme-Bridge series as an example.
Like many of my works, it all begins with a clear mental image—almost like a vision that imposes itself. Once that image is anchored in my mind, I draw a sketch. This serves two purposes: first, to convey the intention of the pose to the model I’ll be photographing, and second, to map out all the scaled dimensions—of both the internal skeleton and the fleshed-out body, as well as the exact measurements of the bridge fragment I plan to build.
From there, I begin working on two parallel paths simultaneously:
I sculpt the female figure in my indoor studio, while I build the steel bridge structure in an outdoor workshop behind my house—an extremely cold space in winter and scorching in summer!
Once I’ve chosen my model, I visit her and take photographs based on the pose and emotional intention I’ve shared with her. I capture every detail of her form.
I start by building the bridge structure, cutting steel pieces and welding them together with a MIG welder. Once the framework is done, I begin building the woman’s internal structure. I use a steel rod for the spine, and thicker wire to shape the limbs and head. I then add volume to the body using aluminum foil. Once the basic shape is there, I apply a first coat of strong epoxy clay—what I call a kind of “under-skin.”
Then I move on to the actual sculpting, working in small sections using a finer epoxy clay that allows for detailed work. This part is challenging: unlike clay or polymer, epoxy has a short work time—around 40 minutes. Since a full sculpture takes me dozens, even hundreds of hours to complete, I have to sculpt one small area at a time without seeing the whole until very late in the process.
When the female figure is finished, I place her temporarily on the bridge to check that everything fits together as I envisioned. Then I move on to finalizing the bridge: cutting and welding all the secondary and tertiary pieces and integrating a solid anchoring system to secure the woman later.
Once the structure is complete, I start the grinding phase—which involves getting into every small corner of the bridge. It’s physically demanding (especially with my chronic back pain), but the pride I feel when it’s done always outweighs the discomfort. After that, I apply hydrochloric acid by hand with a brush—three times, spaced 24 hours apart—to oxidize the steel and create that rich orange rust patina. When the whole bridge is beautifully rusted, I seal it with a varnish made specifically for rusted metal.
Then I return to the female figure. I sand her thoroughly, progressing to the finest grit—just before polishing. I aim for a soft, satiny finish that isn’t glossy. Once the sanding is done, I apply a wash of pigments diluted in water across the entire surface and wipe it off immediately. This doesn’t change the color (which stays a light greige), but it enhances the details, bringing out dimension and texture.
While all this is going on, I reflect on and feel into her emotional state to guide my choice of colors for the translucent resin veils that I’ll later apply to parts of her body. I use colored yarn to mark out each section and photograph it for reference. Then, I begin painting the colored epoxy resin one layer at a time. I have to stay by her side for at least six hours after each coat to catch the resin drips as they fall—since her body is round in every direction. I usually apply around twelve layers in total, in various colors.
Once that’s complete, it’s time to assemble the woman onto the bridge and fix her in place using the anchoring system.
And just like that…
The sculpture comes to life.
What role does color and translucency play in your work, especially with resin? How do you choose your palettes?
Color and translucency—especially with resin—come in at the very end of my process, but they’re absolutely essential. They add another layer of meaning to the sculpture, like they’re revealing something internal.
I choose my colors intuitively. I spend weeks shaping the figure, so I have time to feel what she’s expressing. I live with her, and at some point, I just know what colors she needs. It’s not a predefined palette—it comes from a sensation. And the colors are never just decorative—they have to make sense with what the figure carries.
The translucency of the resin lets me layer tones, play with light, and highlight certain parts of the body. It creates depth, contrast, almost a kind of vibration. And it stands in tension with the bridge structure, which is much more raw and rigid.
What do you hope people feel or think when they experience your work in person or online?
Sometimes, a landscape, an old tree, or a simple gaze can bring a deep sense of calm. That’s the feeling I try to convey through my work.
With both my sculptures and my paintings, my intention is to create a quiet inner space for the viewer. A moment of pause. Of softness. Something simple and true, that soothes or recenters—if only for an instant.