Meet Sophia Stolz

Cake Artist and Food Stylist

Meet Sophia Stolz - illustration 1

Cake Artist and Food Stylist Sophia Stolz, photographed by Luise Reichert. Styling: Luzie Jo

As a cake artist and food stylist, Sophia Stolz charms us daily through her Instagram account @stolzes with creative dessert setups for clients including Vogue, LOEWE and Fendi. We talked to her about her daily inspirations and the connection between contemporary art and the sweet tastes of life.

1. Hello Sophia! You live in Vienna and are seemingly a personification of the city's symbols: the coffee house pastries, the deep roots of the visual arts and, like the cherry on the cake, the unconventional artistic approach. Could you tell us more about yourself and your professional career?

I discovered my passion for baking when I was 15 and learned to love it— you could almost call it an obsession. Before I baked everyday, I started memorizing 18th and 19th century cookbooks and cookbook classics and replicating the recipes until I completely mastered them. At 17, I thought for the first time "everyone wants a great party and a unique birthday celebration, but they all have the same cakes" and so I began, or tried from today's perspective, to tell stories with cakes. 

The goal was to create unique pieces, the only thing that always stayed the same was the shape.... At that time I was also struggling with severe depression and the only thing that helped me was to let off steam in the kitchen. At first, pursuing my passion professionally was not an option - because of the social pressure and also because I was an absurd nerd and felt "I have to prove to everyone that I'm smart enough and worth something and the only way to do that is to study medicine" - well, that was a mistake, because then I started studying dentistry in Munich, fell off the wagon psychologically and dropped out for the first time in my life. 

I then studied art history in Vienna and actually devoted myself entirely to "playing with food", after self-doubt and the fear of never being good enough were constant companions, I found it insanely difficult to post my first cake. But when I did (in 2013), the first requests came very quickly asking if I could make something like this for them. That was the cornerstone.

After I dared to post my art on Instagram, I got a lot of positive encouragement and then it was very clear to me that it was now or never. I started my own business at 20 or 21 and from that day on I never stopped working. What happens today, that I work for clients like Miu Miu or BVLGARI or even for two major Hollywood films around the world, I often do not understand myself, but I know that it is more than I could ever have dreamed of, for that I am very grateful.  

2. You are essentially a sculptor who creates works from flour and sugar. How do you deal with the fact that your art is ephemeral and what characterizes a cake artist?

Exactly - I don't actually work with icing, but I do with a lot of butter and Isomalt (a sugar substitute that you can use to color and shape sugar) but I also work with plaster, ceramics and silicone for fake-cakes or cake sculptures that last forever. I only started doing this about 2 years ago, but I think everyone actually needs cake at home all the time, even if you can't eat it. Cakes just make you happy. 

For me, it's primarily about creating something ephemeral. Cakes or food are the perfect platform to be creative, to build my world on something that doesn't last forever. This fact has 'allowed' me to live out my creativity - which, of course, I also madly doubted. 

I was one of the first in Europe to do crazy things with cakes, the first objects were full of toys, Madonnas or medicines. I didn't and don't care if people actually eat them - for me, every cake was and is a blank canvas that helped me find my freedom (that may sound a bit over-interpreted, but without cakes I don't know if I would still be here).  

I don't know what makes a “cake artist", to be honest, and I don't live by so-and-so's rules, but if I had to, I'd say it's originality that makes a cake artist. Anyone can do this, but just like in art, it's about developing your own style, pushing boundaries, and recognizing yourself in your work. But I think that should be the case in the best scenario in any profession, right?  

3. Who are your clients?  

I'm super lucky to count brands like Chanel, Fendi, Netflix, Miu Miu, H&M, Bvlgari and Disney movies like Magic Mike 3 and Chevalier among my clients.

Meet Sophia Stolz - illustration 1
Meet Sophia Stolz - illustration 1

Left: Balenciaga-inspired Cake sculpture / Right: Cake sculpture in collaboration with ceramic artist Cristina Fiorenza 

4. Art challenges you to rethink: where do you think the connection is between contemporary art and food? At what point is a cake art?

I find food can be art in a very pure form. Food or cakes are probably the most multi-faceted sensory stimuli that can be found in art, they smell, taste, you can attack them and ultimately even digest, and of course, like ideally any work of art, just look at them. On the one hand, you can hold on to them, but at the same time you can't because they are ephemeral. 

A medium that somehow disappears, but then lives on in memory. You associate certain foods or even cakes with special events in your life. The beauty of it is, even if they are really disappointing, they are hard to forget because they stimulate so many senses and at the same time food is just "food". For me it's so cool every time to build something with my hands out of a little flour, sugar and eggs. At what point a cake is art - that's up to everyone to decide. For me, in any case, there is no cake (or anything else) twice. 

Furthermore, I think that the connection between contemporary art and the everyday in a world that is characterized by disturbed eating behavior, a lack but at the same time an oversaturation of the market, a diet and fitness mania or, to shorten it, an extremely passive present topic is not so difficult to see. Making art with food is to a certain extent also very provocative and arrogant. For me, food was my biggest enemy and I started to work with it— a contradiction in terms— but which then helped me to distance myself from this point of view and to extremely appreciate my psychological freedom and privilege.  

5. Tell us more about your creative process! What particular places, and why, are you creatively drawn to? Or is it primarily people and artists who inspire you? If so, who?

My creative process is pretty simple, for me extreme phases (so extremely happy or extremely sad) are my biggest sources of inspiration. I retreat into my world, don't talk, listen to music and create. It's essential for me to be alone during the whole process. 

My sources of inspiration are my brain, my thoughts and fashion. Often I don't even know what I'm doing and it just emerges. Of course, that always involves a risk, but otherwise it would be boring.

A quick and easy answer: NEW YORK CITY. This place is a true home for me, nowhere in the world do I feel so free and ok. The city inspires me endlessly and I don't even need sleep anymore and I'm bubbling over with ideas as soon as I'm already standing at the border control (laughs).

6. What's the craziest project you've ever done and is there a milestone in your career you'd like to share with us?

There are so many. 

From hours of traveling with 12 gingerbread houses on the Flixbus to Berlin to sleepless nights to finish 200 sugar rings, I have been there. I got robbed before a huge job - suitcase, all equipment gone, flew to New York with blood poisoning to take a job, made 50 cakes in 5 days, made a cake for a Fendi shoot in NYC with a pot and fork and a microwave....

A favorite personal highlight and milestone at the same time: a Disney production for which I made 14 cakes (just for the set, not for eating, but still edible), all over 1 meter tall in an AirBnB in Prague - there was no oven, so I had to buy one, put it in the middle of the table in the living room and converted the whole Airbnb. There I also arrived with 20 kilos of sweets and decorations and in the end it was the craziest, best, most beautiful and awesome job of my whole life so far! 

Ah and in 2021 I made "Forbes 30 under 30", hihi. 

Meet Sophia Stolz - illustration 1
Meet Sophia Stolz - illustration 1

Left: Sugar sculptures, Leopold Museum Vienna / Right: Feature of Sophia in the book "Still Here" by TRI ADIC  

7. What art do you collect privately?

It varies, but preferably young artists whose work simply appeals to me. The other day I bought a painting at Christie's in London by an African artist. It was a very impulsive act, I didn't want to buy anything and then I found it such a cool work that my hand went up faster than my head.  

8. If you could give the Sophia of 10 years ago one piece of advice, what would it be? 

So cringe, but: 

Trust the process. 

Or actually... I wouldn't give her any advice at all, because you learn something from everything, and if you don't make certain mistakes then certain things don't come about either.


Their favorite artworks

Sculpture, Antidisturbios de juguete, Eugenio Merino

Antidisturbios de juguete

Eugenio Merino

Sculpture - 90 x 37 x 30 cm

$20,892

Painting, Post comunist fish, Otto Constantin

Post comunist fish

Otto Constantin

Painting - 50 x 70 x 2 cm

Sold

Painting, Surviror, Otto Constantin

Surviror

Otto Constantin

Painting - 70 x 50 x 3 cm

Sold

Sculpture, What happen on earth stays on earth, Otto Constantin

What happen on earth stays on earth

Otto Constantin

Sculpture - 72 x 53 x 0.5 cm

$3,953

Sculpture, Permafrost, Dimitar Solakov

Permafrost

Dimitar Solakov

Sculpture - 15 x 105 x 5 cm

$6,324

Painting, Happily ever after, Egle Norkute

Happily ever after

Egle Norkute

Painting - 84 x 50 x 3 cm

$858

Painting, Modern solutions (waiting for a star to fall), Kazimieras Brazdziunas

Modern solutions (waiting for a star to fall)

Kazimieras Brazdziunas

Painting - 230 x 180 x 3 cm

$2,936

Painting, Since 1975 Ronnie Wood continued painting, Egle Karpaviciute

Since 1975 Ronnie Wood continued painting

Egle Karpaviciute

Painting - 110 x 90 x 2 cm

$3,840

Painting, Broken fridge (what's a girl to do?), Vita Opolskyte

Broken fridge (what's a girl to do?)

Vita Opolskyte

Painting - 225 x 180 x 5 cm

Sold