generic A natural born cheesehead, Manitowoc native Sarah Kaufmann carves out a record-setting career as a cheese sculptor
When the shape of a cow starts popping out of a block of cheddar, Sarah Kaufmann is close to bringing her latest cheese sculpture to life.
"And you put a little eyeball in and the cow comes alive," she said. After adding a pupil, "it pops and it's looking at you."
Kaufmann dons a black-and-white Holstein-patterned apron, complete with a bovine tail she made herself, as she carves cows, cactus, guitar or peaches out of cheese blocks at select Culver's "From Wisconsin With Love" food truck stops this summer, which rolls into Milwaukee for a stop Aug. 3 in the Deer District.
At the Milwaukee stop, guests can vote for which of two Milwaukee charities will receive a $5,000 donation — the Hunger Task Force or Camp Hometown Heroes. The group with the most votes will receive $5,000, while the runner-up will get $2,500.
Kaufmann, a Manitowoc native, won't be sculpting cheese at this stop because she'll be at the Indiana State Fair sculping thousands of pounds of cheese. (Dean Murray, a food artist and sculptor for the last 20 years who appeared on the Disney+ show "Foodtastic" last December, will handle cheese-sculpting duties in the Deer District.)
However, Kaufmann did give us the lowdown on the art of cheese sculpting.
Some of Kaufmann's previous work may be recognizable to Deer District devotees. She carved Fear the Deer and the Milwaukee Bucks logo into cheese during the basketball team's championship run in 2021.
More: Culver's food truck to give away free frozen custard and cheese curds during a stop in Milwaukee
She's an equal opportunity sculptor of Wisconsin sports, having created a cheesy Bucky Badger and Lombardi Trophy on many occasions.
To be fair, with more than 4,000 sculptures carved and counting, she's cheesified everything from Olaf the "Frozen" snowman to the Statue of Liberty. Kaufmann is the cheesehead to call when you want a block of cheese of any size transformed into any thing.
A cow. The moon. (In this case, it really is made of cheese.) A life-size astronaut to commemorate the moon walk's 40th anniversary. An even larger alligator wearing a chef’s hat while frying a turkey — weighing in at 3,121 pounds — to break the Guinness World Record for largest cheese sculpture. Kaufmann held the previous record.
Sprinkled among the hundreds of photos on her website (appropriately named sarahcheeselady.com) are a few of Kaufmann with her sculptures alongside former Green Bay Packers coach Mike McCarthy and celebrities like Snoop Dogg and Martha Stewart.
And it all started when Kaufmann carved a few words into a block of cheese for her job as a graphic artist.
A natural born cheesehead and cheese sculptor
"I'm just a naturally born cheesehead," Kaufmann said.
Hired as a graphic artist by the dairy marketing organization now known as Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin, Kaufmann first carved a block of cheese for a slideshow about the cheesemaking process. That was during the early 1980s, so it was a slideshow with the cha-chunk of slides shuffling around a circular tray after the click of a button. The slideshow was used for educational presentations in schools, tradeshows and other events.
Kaufmann carved "The Art of Cheesemaking" into a block of cheese for the photo she used as the opening slide.
Though pleased with the result, Kaufmann didn't think she'd someday be carving cheese as a career.
During 15 years at Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin, Kaufmann helped at tradeshows, which included lessons on how to grab attention with grocery store cheese displays.
Co-workers would ask Kaufmann to carve a logo into a block of cheddar, the Leaning Tower of Pisa into a piece of mozzarella or whatever seemed appropriate. Without any formal fine art training, Kaufmann set to work transforming cheese into art.
Kaufmann can't explain how she makes it work, just that it always works out.
Usually it's time, not the subject, that creates the most pressure, she said. But she said her mind "somehow" divides up the work to keep her on pace to meet the deadline.
In 1996, she left Wisconsin to become the creative director for Jungle Jim's International Market in Cincinnati.
Barely settled into her new home, Kaufmann's former employer called offering cheese sculpting freelance work.
For the next 10 years Kaufmann was, as she puts it, m-o-o-n lighting. Often leaving Fridays to carve cheese at events and returning Monday morning to her creative director job.
By 2006, Kaufmann's cheese sculpting side hustle had become a second full-time gig. That's when she left her creative director job at Jungle Jim's.
"When you’re a creative director, you’re not doing the art or creative stuff."
She liked the creative work of transforming cheddar into movie characters, race cars, famous landmarks and whatever else was being requested.
You can take the Cheese Lady out of Wisconsin but ...
Kaufmann, the self-proclaimed Cheese Lady, likes talking cheese. From cow's milk to curd to packaging she knows the process — and art — of making cheese.
"I have all that stuff in my head," she said. "I can talk dairy and Wisconsin all day long. Carving is just the hook. It’s an attention-getter. I can carve and talk at the same time."
If watching an image slowly emerge from cheese doesn't hook onlookers, Kaufmann offers more enticement. She hands them a hunk of cheese she's shaved, sliced or skimmed off her sculpture.
At each Culver's stop, that's cheddar from Henning's Wisconsin Cheese in Kiel.
Starting with two 40-pound blocks, Kaufmann whittles them into one seamless sculpture measuring about 22 inches tall by 14 inches wide.
Cheddar is beautifully dense, Kaufmann said of her preferred cheese to carve. Plus it resists melting during the 6 to 8 hours of carving even when temperatures are north of 90 degrees at outdoor events.
Each Culver's sculpture is consistent but unique in design.
Consistent because the city's name, a cow, Culver's logo and "from Wisconsin with love" tagline get carved into each sculpture.
Unique because iconic images in each location get added to the mix. A guitar and Guardians baseball cap in Cleveland. Peaches and the capitol building in Atlanta. Cactus and hot air balloons in Arizona.
While Kaufmann follows artwork provided by Culver's for these sculptures, often she sketches out her own designs.
"Doing people is the hardest thing for me," she said.
And that's counting the Indiana State Fair cheese sculpture weighing in at nearly 2,000 pounds. That sculpture needed inner structures for support and help from college students who helped rough in shapes. Kaufmann estimates that project, collectively, involved about 400 hours of work.
In addition to state fairs and stops along the Culver's food truck tour this summer, Kaufmann's work has taken her to eight Super Bowls.
The popular YouTube show "Good Mythical Morning" called on Kaufmann to sculpt a famous movie death scene out of cheese.
In the segment, Kaufmann carves a bust of the black hat-wearing Nazi in "Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark." In the movie, the character's face gets melted by spirits released from the Ark. In the cheese re-creation, Kaufmann's work gets melted by two heaters.
The melting cheese nearly replicates the movie scene. Posted in December 2017, the clip has gotten more than 1 million views. Kaufmann said two people at the Culver's food truck events recognized her from that video.
Not every Kaufmann sculpture is doomed to a melty demise, but they rarely stand the test of time. Her work mostly gets carved up, packaged and sold or given away.
There is a white cheddar lining to the short-lived nature of her work.
"You can have your art and eat it, too," Kaufmann said. "I’ll never be a starving artist."
Contact Daniel Higgins dphiggin@gannett.com. Follow @HigginsEats on Twitter and Instagram and like on Facebook.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: Wisconsin native carves cheese at Culver's events, Super Bowls, more
