Boehm’s Candies & Chocolates

9/15/13 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, 140 lb. paper

I don’t need much motivation to visit a chocolate factory, and today I had a second motivation: to sketch! What an amazing location for a Seattle Urban Sketchers sketchout – the scent alone was intoxicating!

Boehm’s Candies & Chocolates has a long, eclectic history centering on the life of its founder, Julius Boehm. The Olympic athlete, candy maker and art collector built an Alpine chalet in Issaquah because the foothills reminded him of his Austrian homeland. The whole property – which includes the chalet, a chapel, the candy manufacturing plant and what used to be Boehm’s residence – is stuffed to the gills with art he collected or had commissioned. Many of the pieces are replicas of well-known art, such as the Michelangelo’s “Creation of Man” and “David.” (As soon as I saw all the rooms filled – filled! – with art, I thought of Steve Reddy’s penchant for sketching spaces filled with many, many objects. Steve, you should have been there!)

With so many choices, I was a bit dazed, but I finally settled on a sculpture of Christ bearing his cross, which is just outside the chapel that Boehm built as a shrine to mountain climbers. There were also at least two weathervanes on the buildings, so I sketched them both.

As for the chocolate. . . I was the one still licking my lips as I sketched. 

9/15/13 Platinum Carbon ink, watercolor, 140 lb. paper

9/15/13 Chocolate Brown ink, Sailor pen