On April 15th I went to Bar Harbor (2000 Premier Row, Orlando FL), to sketch Paul Joachim as he worked on a life sized chocolate sculpture. Bar Harbor turned out to be a seafood restaurant and I found the sculptor hard at work after I made my way through a maze of hallways and plastic covered entries. Paul’s assistant was Jennifer Mendez. She was spray painting food ties onto the sculpt. A paper sign taped to an electrical cord said, “No Pictures Please! Secret Project.” It didn’t say “No Sketching” so I was good to go.
This top secret project was being done for two giants in the confections industry, Zane Beg, was carrying Norman R. Davis on his back. Zane was just named one of the top 10 cake decorators in the country. It was Norms birthday and it was the Mother of Cake’s 1st Anniversary. Zane and Norm have been working together for over 16
years. Norm is small, around 5’2 and Zane is well over 6 feet. The
owner of Mother of Cake’s and Paul, the sculptor, thought it would be a lot of fun to have a
life-size cake of Norm on Zane’s back piggy backing, all just for fun and to celebrate their friendship and cake business partnership.
On top of all that, the sculpture was filmed for A&E’s Shipping Wars TV show. Paul confided as I was leaving that he was concerned about transporting the sculpt in an unrefrigerated truck. I know from one photo, of the cake decorators viewing the sculpt, that it did arrive in one piece.The episode is called “Punch Drunk Love” and it just recently aired allowing me to finally share this sketch. I was going to see an premiere screening of the show at a Universal Studios Hotel but changed my mind when I discovered I would have to pay $8 to self park. I had already done my sketch for the day, so I left. If anyone has seen the Shipping Wars episode, let me know what happened!
