All Hail the Butter Cow

July 2, 2009 7:06 AM

It's nearly state fair time and you know what that means - Butter Sculptures! Yes, year after year several fairs contract with artists to sculpt meltable works of art. Perhaps the most famous is the Iowa State Butter Cow, carved year after year since the early 1900s. Of course, with butter art comes rivalry. Not to be outdone, state fairs in Minnesota, Texas, New York...oh, the list is long...each display these chilled masterpieces. However, this year Iowa has taken the rivalry to a new level and not without controversy - The Iowa State Fair has decided that this year they will do a Butter Michael Jackson.
posted by Muddler (23 comments total)

Hurf durf butter sculptor?
posted by louche mustachio at 7:13 AM on July 2, 2009

I remember being fascinated by butter sculptures as a kid - one part awe and one part horror. There's just something awesome and awful about them. So much lipid at once.
posted by sciencegeek at 7:15 AM on July 2, 2009

So much lipid at once.

When I was a kid, a lot of farmboys only gave lipid service to sexual norms. I knew this one kid who fell in love with a cow. "Her brown, lipid eyes" he'd say. As you can imagine, his parents were pretty angry. His mom was abolutely lipid.
posted by DU at 7:20 AM on July 2, 2009 [2 favorites]

10 Conversations With the Butter Sculpture of My Head That I Keep In My Refrigerator.
posted by Astro Zombie at 7:30 AM on July 2, 2009

DU YOU'RE GOING STRAIGHT TO HELL FOR THAT.
posted by nebulawindphone at 7:30 AM on July 2, 2009

I saw some butter sculptors doing their thing at the CNE once. They looked really cold and kind of cranky. I guess it's true what they say, that you have to suffer to create great art.
posted by Go Banana at 7:32 AM on July 2, 2009

Ok, Western butter scultures are cool. But check out these amazing Tibetan butter sculptures.

Close-ups of the process (scroll down a bit).
posted by nickyskye at 7:37 AM on July 2, 2009 [2 favorites]

I like running my finger-cursor along the word "Butter" in the FPP.
posted by iamkimiam at 7:44 AM on July 2, 2009

Butter Mike is not my lover.
posted by box at 7:47 AM on July 2, 2009

Also, I hate to say it, but there's at least 2 extremely obvious (dare I say, tasteless?) jokes to be made about a sculpture of Michael Jackson made out of butter. Think about it people, and then let's not go there.
posted by iamkimiam at 7:49 AM on July 2, 2009

I used to love the idea of the Iowa State Fair Butter Cow. Until I learned it wasn't solid butter, but rather just a thin simulacrum of a butter sculpture, a meager 500 pounds of butter slathered over an exoskeleton of chicken wire and cheap wood. It was like learning that the Mall Santa is a fat drunk in a sweaty suit.

OTOH, Butter Michael Jackson would be awesome. Too bad the real MJ wasn't made of butter, it would have been much easier to resculpt his face.
posted by Nelson at 7:58 AM on July 2, 2009

I do love butter. As a kid I was just as happy to look at the pre-carved 50 lb. blocks of butter at the Minnesota State Fair (a.k.a. "The Great American Get-Together!") as I was to see the completed busts of the Snow Princesses.

The blocks and busts were all in a giant glass carousel, arranged around the periphery; the carousel rotated slowly all day long, and when a Princess was being carved, the whole thing took place inside the carousel. *sigh*
posted by wenestvedt at 8:18 AM on July 2, 2009

If Michael Jackson had been made of butter, living his whole life in the spotlight would have been that much worse.
posted by oaf at 9:08 AM on July 2, 2009 [1 favorite]

History of butter
posted by hortense at 9:22 AM on July 2, 2009

I never knew there were so many Tibetan Buddhists living in the midwest. Ah well, the appreciation of the impermanence of material objects is something that everyone can appreciate.
posted by GuyZero at 9:31 AM on July 2, 2009

Last Tango in Minnesota
posted by xod at 10:12 AM on July 2, 2009

A cow? Pffft. Want to see what 900 pounds of butter will get you in Pennsylvania?

Kids, cow and guardsman were converted into biodiesel after the Farm Show. Patriotic and green--something for everybody.
posted by MonkeyToes at 10:24 AM on July 2, 2009

I had never even heard of butter sculptures before and now I am enlightened. Thank you! This is simultaneously so awful and so wonderful that I am just completely overwhelmed and all I can think about is T.H. White's description of the fairies' house of butter in The Once and Future King which I regrettably cannot find online but which I remember as being totally nauseating. And they recycle the butter and keep using it for ten years? Ten year old butter. Om nom nom - glargh.
posted by mygothlaundry at 10:56 AM on July 2, 2009

This must have been a midwest thing because I never saw one at any state fairs that I attended.
posted by Rhomboid at 11:48 AM on July 2, 2009

Not to be outdone, here's Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson in butter at the 2008 Iowa State Fair.
posted by swerve at 1:36 PM on July 2, 2009

The Ohio State Fair (which my wife claims has the best butter cow of any fair - though she has a nativist's bias) has done non-cow sculptures as well. Two I've seen are the butter Wright Brothers and the butter Ohio Presidents.

I don't know what they'll have this year....
posted by esinclai at 11:42 AM on July 3, 2009

Every year when these things come out for the state fairs I'm fascinated by the unanswered question: what do they do with all that butter afterwards? They can't just use it, right? I'm thinking the long hours out of refrigeration plus all the handling would kind of make it not safe.
Which I find a little sad, as I really like a nice slice of bread and butter.
And from those Tibetan butter scupltures - I've always wondered what Tibetan yak butter tastes like and if it tastes good in tea. I'm sure that they don't reuse the butter in those sculptures either.

Now I'm off to search for a weird FAQ of Butter website and hoping I don't find anything too frightening in Google...
(I'm so bummed that the Debates and Controversies of Butter isn't as enlightening or exciting as I'd hoped.)
posted by batgrlHG at 6:47 PM on July 6, 2009

Tibetan butter tea tastes salty as hell and generally like crap. At least it did that one time at Little Tibet in Toronto where I'm assuming they know what it's supposed to taste like. Though they probably just used regular butter instead of Yak butter.
posted by GuyZero at 7:35 PM on July 6, 2009