Paul Joachim has taken food art to a whole new level, creating life-sized sculptures using Belgian chocolate. But contrary to what one might expect, he doesn't do it using moulds.
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The sculptor, from Orlando, Florida, brought his unique art form to Melbourne over the weekend, performing at the Cake, Bake and Sweets Show at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre. Over the space of three days, he built a 152-centimetre statue of Michelle Payne, the first female jockey to win the Melbourne Cup.
"I always start by researching my subjects," Joachim explains. Beyond their physicality, this includes gaining an understanding of their personality by watching them in TV interviews and sifting through photos of them on social media. "I don't often get to meet them, so a lot of the time this requires digging online," he says.
From there, he determines the posture of the subject, measuring out the various sizes for each body part, and builds an armature using either PVC and fibreboard for chocolate figures that aren't intended to be eaten, or stainless steel for those that are.
It is upon that skeleton – which looks like a 3D stick figure – that chocolate is layered and shaped to resemble a life-sized human form.
So how much chocolate is required to build such an artwork? Michelle Payne took 50 kilograms, precisely how much the jockey is said to weigh. "Surprisingly, all my chocolate sculptures end up weighing within 2 kilograms of their subjects' real weight," says Joachim.
That includes his chocolate sculpture of basketballer LeBron James, which required a massive 115 kilograms of rich Belgian delight.
