After much anticipation — and milking puns for all they're worth — the theme of this year's butter cow display at the Ohio State Fair was revealed on Tuesday.
In addition to the beloved bovine and her baby, the exhibit salutes the crème de la crème of the nation's athletes. Four life-size butter sculptures depict a track and field para-athlete positioned at the starting line, a gymnast doing a handstand on the balance beam, a cyclist zooming around a curve and a high jumper arching backward and suspended in the air as he clears the bar.
The creamy creations will be on view in the Dairy Products Building at the Ohio Expo Center, where the fair opens Wednesday and runs through Aug. 4.
At the unveiling on Tuesday, American Dairy Association Mideast's president and CEO Scott Higgins spoke to a gathering of community members who helped make the display possible, expressing his appreciation not just for the state's dairy farmers, but dairy processors as well.
"Our dairy-processing community is absolutely essential to our success. Without dairy processors, our fresh, wholesome milk doesn't get transformed into cheese, yogurt and ice cream and all those other products," said Higgins.
"So we need to also celebrate Ohio's dairy-processing community. Without them, we cannot be successful.... We need a vibrant, successful, innovative dairy-processing community for Ohio dairy-farm management to be successful."
This year's buttery replicas are the craftwork of a team of technical sculptors led by Cincinnatian Paul Brooke, who worked with Tammy Buerk of West Chester, Erin Birum of Columbus, dairy farmer Matt Davidson of Sidney and Joe Metzler of Auburn.
The display, which used 2,000 pounds of butter, took the team about 450 hours to complete, including 375 hours spent sculpting inside a 46-degree cooler.
This isn’t the first time the butter display has honored athletes. The 2017 exhibit depicted high school athletes fueled by chocolate milk, the 2010 sculptures honored two players from the Cleveland Browns and Cincinnati Bengals and, in 1997, it featured an Ohio State football player and cheerleader.
What it takes to build the butter display
Planning for the butter display began months before the fair, said Jenny Crabtree, senior vice president of communications for the American Dairy Association Mideast . This year, ideation for the theme began around May. Once the theme came together, Brooke began the process of bringing sculptures to life by using a 3D digital model to maneuver and see the figures inside the coolers.
Once designs were finalized, the core team of five sculptors, alongside five interns from the Ohio State University's art department, came together to sculpt the entire display over one week, from July 7 to late evening on July 13.
From rides to road closures: What to know if you go to the 2024 Ohio State Fair
While fairgoers will be donning flip-flops, sunglasses and shorts when they visit the display, sculptors were decked out for winter with gloves, hats and scarves to keep themselves warm in the 46-degree cooler where they work.
While the chill is meant to help the sculptures maintain their shape, the process begins by letting the 55-pound blocks of expired butter sourced from a creamery in Texas (Ohio does not produce blocks of butter that large) warm and soften up. Once the consistency becomes like clay, an additive process is used to build up butter on an armature, or frame, supporting its weight.
As the butter hardens, the carving begins, and the figure — for example, the high jumper, which is actually suspended on an armature from the ceiling — takes form in all its buttery glory.
"The immediacy and the speed at which you can create a full-size sculpture is really cool, just piling on big, five-pound lumps of melty butter and shaping it and then when it cools down, carving it," Brooke said.
"That's how we get this whole thing done in a week because it's a quick medium, but it's messy. We go through a lot of clothes and shoes every year."
New rule for fairgoers under 18: Ohio State Fair enacts new safety policy: No unaccompanied minors after 6 p.m.
Entering the coolers, however, doesn't mean that designs are set in stone — or cold butter, rather. Being the malleable medium that it is, a butter cow's udder, placed close to the cooler entrance, might get some damage from the heat coming through the door. (The team has since learned to be careful about how much heat they let in).
Or an armature might give. Brooke recalled one situation where the previous lead sculptor, Bob Kling , dealt with a particularly slippery sculpture.
"I’ve witnessed Bob Kling doing a figure that fell away from him, and he grabbed it around the waist and started banging on the glass for someone to come and help, and I remember looking up and him holding this butter figure on the waist. It looked like he was giving it the Heimlich maneuver. She hit the floor, and we had another one to rebuild."
This year, Buerk said the team had to improvise on the runner's pose, as the runner fell over twice throughout the week. But the team overcame the challenge. She said that knowing which area each person excels in comes in handy.
"We kind of all fall into place," Buerk said.
The classic state fair tradition began in the early 1900s, with the first-ever butter cow debuting in 1903. Figures with a theme were added to the display in the 1960s.
Brooke's story with the butter bovine started in 2000 when he joined as an intern under Kling. Taking over after the previous lead sculptor, Kling brought in a new team of toy sculptors, including Brooke, from the Cincinnati-based toy company Kenner, for that year's theme, "A Day at the Fair with Hasbro Toys."
For a week, Brooke and colleagues traveled to Columbus on a paid trip and carved a bunch of butter figures, including a gigantic Furby — a business trip like no other. After traditionally working with small action figures and toys, the handiwork required for the life-size butter sculptures was out of their comfort zone.
"But it turned out beautifully, as always," Crabtree said. "It's one of my favorite displays. Everybody needs a little bit of a break from their day-to-day, and that certainly gave that crew a break."
"They’re just getting better every year," Brooke said. "And they’re not sculptors, they do other stuff all year and just come in and blow my mind every year, basically."
Carrying the (butter) torch
Today, Brooke is determined to beat Dan Ross, the lead sculptor of the butter display who came before Kling with 36 years under his belt. At the same time, he recognizes that he is merely one piece in the buttery legacy of the Dairy Products Building — it's students from OSU were invited to join this year.
Like Brooke, Buerk joined the team as an intern in 2010 and then as an art student at Ohio State University. When she's not hard at work sculpting the butter calf, she travels around horse shows to braid their manes. She's been working with the team ever since then.
She said people tend to give a similar reaction to hearing about her day job as her annual commission of working on the display.
"The last day, as we cleaned up, it's kind of like, 'Huh... We're done now.' It's a little sad because each year, there's this anticipation."
Working together with the students in the cooler, Buerk said she pondered what the team was carrying on for the future of the tradition.
"Thinking about the interns and future students, I wondered, 'Will they stick around as long as we did? Will they also carry it on?'" Buerk said. "You feel a little bit of pride to be a part of this big deal at the fair."
elim@dispatch.com
bpaschal@dispatch.com
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio State Fair's 2024 butter cow display honors nation's athletes
Most Popular
Comments / 0