Artist re-creates St. Basil’s Cathedral in sugar

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By Deirdre Cox Baker | Friday, July 04, 2008 |

Linda Harmon of Davenport puts the finishing touch �” a sprinkle of edible shimmer dust �” on a white chocolate replica of St. Basil's Cathedral on Friday. Harmon was commissioned to transform the famous Moscow landmark into a sugar sculpture for today's wedding of Ashley Schneckloth and Evan Laber, who met in Russia. (Elisa Petersen/QUAD-CITY TIMES) Buy this Photo

St. Basil’s Cathedral has stood for 450 years on Red Square in Moscow, but an amazing sugar-based replica of it will be erected today inside The Abbey Hotel, Bettendorf.

Artist Linda Harmon has worked since February on the cathedral replica, which is constructed entirely of sugar-based ingredients such as white chocolate. The complicated and colorful design is 6 feet long, 4 feet high and 42 inches wide.

Harmon designed it for today’s wedding of Ashley Schneckloth and Evan Laber, but it may also be displayed for public viewing if a proper venue can be found. For now, it will be in the Bettendorf hotel’s grand banquet room.

Harmon put the finishing touches on the artwork during the busy July 4 holiday. She plans to have it erected at The Abbey early today.

Schneckloth and Laber attended college in Missouri and actually met during an academic trip to Russia. The cathedral represents an “ecclesiastical relic of old Russia herself,” Schneckloth wrote in a letter to Harmon, asking her to take it on as a sugar art project.

Schneckloth’s mother and Harmon work together at Kraft Foods in Davenport, but Harmon still hesitated before tackling the project, the most complicated one she’s done during the 25 years she has practiced her hobby.

“Whenever I do things, I tell the people that I have the right as the artist to do what I have to do to make the project work. This is a likeness of the cathedral.”

Likeness it may be, but it appears as a dead ringer when compared to photos of the cathedral on the Internet. The real cathedral was built in the mid-1500s, commissioned by Ivan the Terrible.

The replica includes a tremendous amount of detail and several “onion domes,” which are each brightly colored and curved and provided special challenges to Harmon. The artist cooked and processed building blocks of colored chocolate in the kitchen of her Davenport home, built the domes to scale in tiny squares and then assembled the project in the adjoining living room.

“My husband is going to be glad when this is done,” she said.

Valued at $5,000, Harmon actually prepares the chocolate on her stove. She mixes various forms of it with Karo syrup, and then attaches the sweet material to a Styrofoam model. Her husband of 34 years, an accomplished woodworker, helps by building templates.

The candy walls are smooth and easy to paint, “like a canvas,” she said.

“It’s tricky to make the chocolate walls look old,” she added, but she accomplishes this with a product called royal icing. One of the last tasks she will do is to dust edible shimmering powder on the towers and structure, to make it stand out on the final display.

“I love a challenge, I guess,” Harmon said. “But this sugar art is my passion, I so thoroughly enjoy it.”

She is president of the Sweet Arts Club in Davenport, and got some help from her club friends when it came to extreme detail work. This includes tiny triangles around each rectangular window on some towers, modified semi-circle designs on others.

“It’s all about the details. The more you have on these, the better,” she said.

The nine towers and onion domes will be taken off the cathedral and wrapped in bubble wrap this morning. The cathedral base will be carefully carried out to Harmon’s van, which she plans to have ready to go with the air conditioning turned on.

Sugar art’s biggest enemies are heat and humidity, but Harmon said this St. Basil’s will last 1 to 2 years if kept in optimal conditions.

Turning the cathedral over to the Schneckloth wedding is actually a relief, she said. “It means I’ve accomplished a challenge, it’s done, and now I want everyone to enjoy it.”

Deirdre Cox Baker can be contacted at (563) 383-2492 or dbaker@qctimes.com.