Artists in Elgin working on one sweet ride
A team of artists in Elgin is sculpting NASCAR perfection in the form of a four-wheeled confection.
Since last week, Jim Victor and two assistants have been holed up in a northwest side warehouse creating a life-size replica of the No. 18 Toyota Camry "M&M" car driven by Kyle Busch.
But instead of fiberglass, aluminum and high octane, the primary ingredient for this car is - you guessed it - chocolate.
The team first built a wood skeleton for the car and attached styrofoam before applying layer upon layer of some 1,500 pounds of melted Dove chocolate, 100 pounds of cocoa and 100 pounds of cocoa butter to form the sleek exterior of the the 15-foot-long race car.
Victor, who has created sculptures of cheese, butter and chocolate before, said this is the largest sculpture he's ever done in terms of sheer volume.
"It's just big," he said. "First of all, you have to find a place to work. My studio was inadequate. We left room for an inch of chocolate on it. It's real milk chocolate."
The team arrived last Wednesday from Philadelphia and has logged 12-plus hour days since, including working on July 4.
During a visit Wednesday, Victor, his wife Marie Pelton and freelance sculptor Jimm Scannell painstakingly shaved off ripples of chocolate from the car as an air conditioning unit struggled to keep the temperature at 66 degrees.
Victor said the piece was about 80 percent done; the final product will be colored brown with the number 18, headlights and other details carved into the surface.
"Chocolate is not an easy thing to work with," he said. "It's slow, but you do see progress."
The trio said they snack occasionally on their medium, but do they ever get sick of chocolate?
"I don't know if that's possible," Scannell said.
On Friday, the car will be loaded into a refrigerated truck and moved to the Chicagoland Speedway in Joliet for the Lifelock.com 400 race this weekend. The chocolate car will reside in an air-conditioned corporate tent until being moved to a permanent spot at a Mars Corporation warehouse.
Busch is the defending champion at the speedway, winning both the Nationwide and Sprint Cup races last year.
The chocolate car promotion is part of the Mars "Real Chocolate Relief Act" through which people can go to realchocolate.com and enter their name for a chance to get a coupon for a free candy bar from now through September.
For the staff at Elgin-based Hatch Distribution Services, where the sculpture is taking shape, the project has been its own relief of sorts.
Joe Nitch, principal at Hatch distribution, said the whole warehouse smells sweet and it's fun to watch the team's progress.
Ted Hathorn, Hatch operations manager, said one of their clients, a public relations firm that represents Mars, asked if they could use space for the project. They wholeheartedly agreed.
"It's awesome," Nitch said. "We figured it would be neat. I have no idea how they're going to do it. I'm a warehouse distribution guy. They're the artists."