photo courtesy of Midwest Dairy
Linda Christensen butter sculptor
Christensen with 2017 Princess Kay of the Milky Way
What’s the most iconic thing at the Minnesota State Fair? Sweet Martha’s, the corn roast, or the dependable, super long beer list?
As they’ve been a tradition for more than 50 years, the butter sculptures of the Princess Kay of the Milky Way contestants are arguably one of the most memorable and Midwestern things you can find.
After securing the gig right after graduation from MCAD in 1972, Minneapolis native Linda Christensen didn’t expect to be sculpting the busts decades later, and had no idea how much impact this simple after-college gig would have. 48 years and a move to California later, she’s still making the trek back to the Land of 10,000 Lakes to be an important part of the Great Minnesota Get Together.
We chatted with the artist as she approaches her 48th year of carving the spreadable (and delicious) medium at the State Fair.
How does it feel to have been doing it for so long?
I’m at an age where I’m doing a life review. I think back to 1972, the first year of the butter sculpture, and I think, “What if I could have seen then that I’d still be doing it now?” It would have just floored me. A lot has happened, from being a goofball novelty that I was doing that got me a little summer money, to a real involvement in all of the rural and farm communities.
I know so many women from over all these years. I’ve spent a whole day every day for 12 days, talking to women who have had an entirely different experience from me in terms of country/city. I think I have an honorary doctorate in theoretical farming for sure. And it has gotten to be - I can go to any little town in Minnesota, say who I am, and someone there is going to say, “Oh, you did my cousin back in 1978 or whatever.” It’s really evolved into something quite important to me.
Can you explain how you got started?
The placement officer at the college [Minneapolis College of Art and Design] was responsible for filling requests from the community for an arts student to do something or another. So she really sent a lot of things my way–I never turned anything down. So I did hillbilly figures for a shooting gallery, for instance. You know, what the heck.
There was a man who did the butter sculpture. Butter sculpture goes back to the mid-1800s. It got to be kind of a way for states to advertise their main products - at World Fairs and fairs and that kind of thing. States were trying to drum up farmers and advertise. Like Florida would have these huge orange displays, and things like the Corn Palace. It was all done as a sort of way to advertise agricultural products.
Minnesota was a big wheat producer, and they wanted to be known as the “Bread and Butter State,” because we also did a lot of dairy. So they started this a long time ago. It was interrupted for a while, but then they started it up again. This man had been doing it for four years before me. I saw him when I was still in my first year in art school, which must have been his first year doing it. Then he quit. Then the placement officer called and asked if I was interested in doing it, and I started the year that I graduated. I had already been married and had two children when I started school. That was unusual back in the day. I was MCAD’s first married woman with children.
Can you break down your sculpting process? I know that’s probably a loaded question.
For a very long time, those blocks have weighed 90 pounds each. The butter is chilled, almost a little colder than your refrigerator. It’s 38 degrees. You know how hard one 1-pound block of butter can be when you first take it out of the refrigerator? It’s hard to cut through it with a knife. So, I use a clay tool that is actually a wire cutter, made out of piano wire. It has a handle on each end, so that it pulls through the block without much resistance. That’s how I get the rough shape of the block.
Then I have a butcher knife and I start cutting out a little more of the shape. I refine them a little bit. Then I get the clay tools that are like wood sticks with little hoops on the end, and a little paring knife. That’s how I do the detail. The butter is so hard that the clay tools often pull apart when I’m working with them, so I have to replace them every now and then. I’ve got the same paring knife and butcher knife I’ve had for about 30 years.
I only can wear rubber gloves, and my hands get really cold. Then at the very end, I take them off and I go out in the back parking lot behind the dairy building where the cars have been sitting in the heat all day, and I hold my hands over a hot car to warm them up. Then I come back in and use my bare hands to smooth the butter down at the end.
I was going to ask if you had a hot coffee with you, but there’s a way to do it! So it takes you about 6-8 hours to carve one?
I get in about 9 o’clock in the morning. I try to get done between 4:30 and 5 o’clock. Actual working time - the princess goes out for the parade and we break for lunch, and we have a couple breaks, so I would say I probably put 5-6 actual working hours in on a sculpture.
The floor rotates in my butter booth. It’s a hexagon-shaped structure, and then the butter blocks and the finished sculptures are on the outside perimeter, and they turn right around with the turntable floor. By the last day, I have sea legs. It feels like the ground is moving when I walk around.
How does it feel to have people watching you the whole time?
To complete one a day is so incredibly intense, I have to stay so focused. Unless people that I know - people that I know have to come up and rap on the window if they want to wave to me. And I may or may not wave back. Yeah, I don’t see the crowd out there very much.
Do you go for a specific feature first before getting the general shape?
You try to keep everything moving along at the same speed, kind of. I definitely get a little more into completing the mouth just a little bit more, because then I center the rest of everything on that.
How do the girls react during the process during and after?
I’ve done their mothers. And I’ve done their older sisters and their cousins and aunts and everything. They’re in 4H and FFA, and they’ve been bringing cattle or 4H projects or something to the fair for years, and they tell me that they’ve been watching me since they’ve been little girls. They tell me that they’ve dreamed of getting their butter sculpture done one day.
That’s so sweet.
Isn’t it?
Courtesy of Linda Christensen
Minnesota State Fair Butter Sculpture
I’ve seen online that a lot of people keep the sculptures?
They do all kinds of things with them. Some of them have travelled to New York. A photo of one has been a clue in Jeopardy. They’ve been on wedding tables. I’ve done 7 butter heads for this one family. The very first one used hers as a centerpiece on her parents’ 25th wedding anniversary table. Two of the 7 heads married in, and brought their heads with them. I’ve heard of towns that put banners over their streets that they’re the home of this year’s Princess Kay, and VFW Hall will get a glass-fronted cooler, and display it so people can come in and look at it. It’s a big deal!
How does it feel to be a celebrity at the fair?
No one has ever stopped me on the street.
Really?
Yeah. Well it’s fun. I’ll have to admit. A lot of people say, “What keeps you coming back?” Well, there’s a lot of reasons, but I’ve got to admit that I enjoy the attention.
Has the way that you sculpt changed over the years?
It has changed. It’s changed quite a bit. I’ve improved. I would hate to see one of the first ones I ever did. One of the things I have to say is all of the people that are involved, whether it’s people outside my cooler or the families of the girls I’m doing, or whoever, they’re the most generous, uncritical audience you could ever imagine.
If I was using clay, no one would be impressed. But the fact that it’s butter, just astounds people. I’ve always worked really hard to make the sculptures. I try to make some nice, smooth, sweeping curves with the hair and make them beautiful.
One of the stories that I tell a lot - and I wrote it in my book too - is that just maybe a few years in, maybe my second or third year, one of the princesses in the booth was telling me that the family lived far enough away that they would have to leave overnight to be there for the day that she was being sculpted. So as soon as she was selected in May as one of the finalists, her family started milking their cows a few minutes later every day, so that while they were gone their schedule was different enough from the neighbors’ milking schedule that the neighbors could then go over and milk their cows. Just so they could be there. And I realize more and more since I heard that story that that is a 24/7 day in and day out year in and year out commitment that you have to make to those animals. They’re a hardworking bunch of people.
How much time at the fair do you have to look around when you’re not carving?
Oh, I get there early and I walk around the fairgrounds. That’s my favorite time at the fairground. I go down to the cow barn, of course. A lot of times the kids are out with their sheep and their goats, exercising them. And the big draft horses and stuff. I kinda walk around down there and then I do a little walk around. And then some days I forage for lunch, but mostly they have a camper trailer that has a little kitchenette and that sort of thing, and I fix my own lunch.
So you don’t have a favorite food at the fair?
Now I should probably say the malt. In the dairy building. But I love the corn roast. And then there’s this one thing up in the Food Building that I like a lot. I go out in search of things with vegetables. Few and far between at the fairgrounds.
Do you get sick of the butter by the time you’re done?
No, no, no, no. You know, just about everyone asks me that question when they interview me. It’s like that’s a whole different ballgame. You take a quarter stick of butter out and you put a pad on your asparagus, and that’s different than 90 pounds. 90 pounds doesn’t even seem like butter.
Do you see yourself doing this indefinitely?
No, I would like very much to continue to do it at least until my 50th year. This year, there’s a couple of people that are going to start an apprenticeship.
So this will be the first year that you’ll have an apprentice, then?
Well, there’s been a couple of people that have been observing, but I’m going to actually work with them at the fair.
That’s lucky that they get to be up close and personal with you, learning from you.
Yeah, I got no such thing. The president of the dairy association at that time got me a 50 pound block of butter and met me at the fairgrounds in July before the fair, and had me sculpt his 16-year-old neighbor girl. He dropped us off at about 9 and came back at noon, because he was going to take us to lunch. He looked at what I did so far and said, “Oh, you’re going to be fine, you’re hired.” Well, I didn’t know if I was going to be fine. For the first time, I actually walked in there to do that, I had never actually completed a butter sculpture. I was very tense, let’s just put it that way.
Why do you think Minnesotans love the butter sculptures so much?
Well, I think that there’s still a lot of people in Minnesota, like me, whose families farmed. I come from a farm background. More than that, not even necessarily that their families come from a farm background, but I think people still yearn for the idea of the family farm.
When the Princess Kay of the Milky Way program–that’s what this is all about–involves young women who are involved in dairy farming, almost all of them have worked alongside their parents from the time they were kids. They’re the ones that get up before they catch the bus in the morning and they help shovel out the barn. I think part of the success of the butter sculpture in Minnesota is people love that idea, the rural life and the family farm. There’s a certain nostalgia about it, and it’s no secret that family farms are being lost and they want to see this evidence that there are still family farms around.
That, and I think that because it has become such a tradition and it has gotten to be associated with Minnesota. People in Europe know about it. People love their states, places that they live, and they like things that make their state unique. And that’s one of them for sure.
What do you tell people in California about this when you leave? It’s such a niche thing.
I almost don’t even talk about it. (laughs) It’s funny. They don’t get it.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
