Brendan Jamison is a young contemporary artist who creates arguably the sweetest sculptures in the world, literally. His designs are top notch, but its the sugar cubes he uses as building material that make his works irresistible.

31-year-old Jamison, from Belfast Northern Ireland, first started using sugar cubes as building blocks for large scale buildings in 2004, when he created a series of 9-foot-tall minaret-style buildings. They caused quite a stir in the art world, and even caught the eyes of building developers, many of which commissioned him to create sweet models of their architectural projects.

Although he has worked with a variety of materials throughout his artistic career, including  bronze, wood and wool, it’s safe to say it was his sugar-cube creations that brought him international recognition. “Sugar is a beautiful material to work with, it can be cut and carved into organic shapes, and the sugar crystals can provide a sparkling surface in natural light”, Jamison says about his favorite medium.

So far, the artist has sculpted and glued sugar cubes into complex structural models like the replica of the Tate Modern (71,908 cubes), the Sugar Walk development (11,256) and the giant sugar tower created for Eastborne’s Towner Museum and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. The latter is his greatest work yet, numbering a staggering 250,000 sugar cubes and weighing 506 kilograms. Standing 180 cm high, and with a circumference of 100 cm, it is the largest sugar cube sculpture in the world.

Brendan Jamison’s sugar cube tower is currently on display at the Towner Museum, where it will remain until September 2011. From December 2011 and until February 2012, the monumental sculpture will be showcased at the Ormeau Baths Gallery, in Belfast.

Photos by Brendan Jamison

via Green Diary