Nicole Bauberger


Dress Form Sculpture



Collaboration with Marie Côté


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Marie and I have been collaborating for two years now. We have a lovely rapport going on.


Our work has been evolving towards Marie throwing vessels which I modify into dress forms. We go back and forth to figure out how her thrown vessel can give me opportunities in the dress sculpting. During the two past sessions, we have used her usual porcelain, clay found in an orchard which rings beautifully when played as a bell, and polar ice clay, which is made by Plainsman and is a particularly white and translucent porcelain, if you can get it thin enough. Here are some images of work in progress, some fired, some not.





First Thrown Dress



This is the first dress form we made from a vessel thrown by Marie. After bisque-firing, we dipped it into a slip of clay from a Montreal construction site. That slip mostly flaked off, but we really loved the resulting marks.



Pinch Dress



This is a dress that was not thrown by Marie, but pinched by me, and then worked at leather-hardness, inspired by the wind in some of Marie's work.



Pinch Dress



This is a dress that was not thrown by Marie, but pinched by me, and then worked at leather-hardness, inspired by the wind in some of Marie's work.



Sanded Back Dress



This dress had similar surface workings to the one above, but I sanded it back before firing.



How high the
moon



This is a dress in Polar Ice clay, not yet fired. The surface treatment makes me think of wind. The dress as a whole has a sense of stillness in movement. I was singing 'How high the moon' (Lewis-Hamilton) as I worked on it. I can't wait to see it fired.



Unfired Polar Ice



This is the other unfired polar ice dress, with a more sanded surface.



Unfired Recycled Clay



These next two dresses are made from recycled found Québec clay. They resound beautifully like bells when struck after they're fired. I can't wait to do an installation with that. In the meantime, I think they looked interesting unfired too.



I live and create on the traditional territories of the Kwanlin Dün First Nation and Ta’an Kwäch’än Council.

© Nicole Bauberger 2021