Estimated read time: 3-4 minutes
This archived news story is available only for your personal, non-commercial use. Information in the story may be outdated or superseded by additional information. Reading or replaying the story in its archived form does not constitute a republication of the story.
SALT LAKE CITY — The Murray woman who has created the cow butter sculptures at the Utah State Fair for the past 17 years explained the process behind the unique exhibit.
Debbie Brown graduated from Brigham Young University with an art degree and a love of sculpting. While she traditionally sculpted with clay and alabaster stone, she was introduced to a different medium in 1998: butter.
Brown said the Utah Dairy Council commissioned her and fellow sculptor Barbara Westover to sculpt an exhibit out of butter for the Utah State Fair, in an effort to promote dairy products.
"They said there was a lady in Iowa that did butter sculpture," Brown said. "So they flew her in and they had her teach two of us how to make butter sculpture. That was our first experience with that. We just made a big, life-sized cow — anatomically correct looking cow."
Since their first exhibit in 1998, the cows in the sculptures have become more "fun and comical" and the Utah Dairy Council began asking junior high and high school students for themes. Brown said they vote on the themes and begin sketching designs for the butter sculpture.
"We come up with a winning design and then (we'll) kind of sketch out some ideas of how we can make it work for our cooler," Brown said. "It's a 10-foot-by-7-foot case and so we have to figure out what will fit inside."
Brown got a new sculpting partner in 2007, Wasatch High School art teacher Matt McNaughtan. However, the process has remained basically the same since 1998. After sketching out the design, the pair get a custom-made armature to support their sculpture and use wire mesh to form the outline of each cow.
Each year, the sculptors receive about 800 pounds of butter donated from Meadow Gold in 5-gallon buckets. The butter is initially frozen so they allow it to thaw to room temperature before they begin sculpting it onto the metal structures. Brown said the biggest challenge is getting the butter to the right consistency.
"The butter has moisture in it so we had to buy low-moisture butter because we'll squeeze it and it'll have water actually drip out of it," Brown said. "If it's too cold, we can't work with it. We've got to soften it up. … As far as working with it, it's a lot like clay. I guess the challenge is working in a cooler that's about 40 degrees. … We tried to use gloves and gloves don't work very well, so we just use our bare hands. So it gets a little chiller sometimes with the blower in there."
Brown said she and McNaughtan begin working on the exhibit on Labor Day each year and the butter sculptures take about 80 hours to complete. Because such a large amount of butter is used, Brown said at the end of the fair, they scrape it off the sculptures and reuse it. The butter can be recycled in the sculptures for about five years.
The 2015 exhibit features a punk rock cow with its band.
"It's just really fun to come up with something new and different each year," Brown said.
The Utah State Fair opened Sept. 10 and will run until Sunday.
