When the world was created, Slayer was playing. In his studio in northern New Jersey, Massimo Gammacurta, a photographer and candy artist from Rome, listened to hardcore music and worked over pots of boiling liquids at a small stove in his basement studio. He was working on the lollipop globe that would grace Sunday’s cover of The New York Times Magazine.

Mr. Gammacurta knows what you’re thinking. “It looks like I’m running a meth lab,” he said, “but I would go broke if I were making drugs — it takes me forever to make a batch.”