Sculptors find renown worldwide by turning butter into works of art
PHILADELPHIA
Art is often permanent, hung on museum walls for centuries, or cast in bronze and erected outdoors to face the elements and the changing tide of history. The art Jim Victor and Marie Pelton make is transitory and delicious over lobster.
The Conshohocken, Pa., couple have worked with chocolate, cheese, and ice, but butter’s brought them worldwide acclaim. Together, they have created large butter sculptures for agricultural shows and fairs all over the country, including most of the Pennsylvania Farm Shows since the mid’90s. In September, the couple unveiled the 52nd annual American Dairy Association North East butter sculpture at the virtual New York State Fair, an 800-pound pandemic-theme piece — including children remote-learning and a masked milkman — that took them 10 days to create.
Few of their pieces last very long, though one chocolate Statue of Liberty has stood in Las Vegas since 2014.
“The food sculptures we do live on in photographs and pictures, and that’s how we document them,” Pelton said.
There’s no official word on whether Pennsylvania’s 105th annual Farm Show, which is going virtual in January, will feature a butter sculpture, but it’s often a must-see for attendees taking selfies. Last year’s butter sculpture featured mascots from Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, including Gritty, the bizarre and beloved symbol of the Flyers and perhaps the city itself. They spent about 10 days sculpting it.
For the January Farm Show, “they haven’t made a formal announcement, but we think it’s definitely going to be a go,” Pelton said.
Butter is not what Victor, 75, and Pelton, 55, were envisioning when they attended the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts on North Broad Street. Marble, clay, and stone have been the standard sculpting mediums for millennia, and they both have worked with those traditional materials, along with 50-pound blocks of butter.
On a recent weekday afternoon, the couple sat beside each other in a pen on a West Chester farm, sculpting horse miniatures in clay with their fingers and wooden tools. Wruben, Pelton’s Dutch Warmblood horse, sniffed the clay from time to time. The couple sculpt Wruben and other farm animals to sharpen their skills, but they also have contemplated teaching classes in sculpting, both online and in person.
“Especially during this pandemic time period where our business has completely stalled, we were thinking what could we do to change up our business,” Pelton said. “It’s typically something you would find in culinary schools, and we’re not chefs.”
Pelton and Victor have seen the merging of art and food grow over the last decade, particularly on cable television, where shows about elaborate cakes, baking competitions, and chef challenges have become wildly popular. They may have something in the works themselves, but said they’re required to keep mum about it.
Sculpting with butter, done on site, has unique pros and cons, Victor said. At the Farm Show, the sculpture is displayed in a refrigerated glass room, as butter is prone to melt quickly. Melting butter can make the floor slippery, and on a few occasions, when sculpting in their outdoor mobile booth, the sun has melted some sculptures, causing the pieces to slide to the floor.
Victor said the sculpting room isn’t as cold as people would think, often 65 degrees. He prefers his butter to be warmer and softer.
“That’s the beauty of it,” he said. “You can control the temperature and control the consistency of butter.”
Sculptural armatures, akin to skeletons, are usually made of aluminum wire, though for the heavier butter sculptures, steel is used. The butter is often donated by large national producers like Land O’ Lakes or Keller’s, and no, it can’t be melted and drizzled on popcorn.
“It’s waste butter we get from plants,” Pelton said. “It’s stuff that’s been extruded or cleaned out, or stuff that’s been damaged, or generally can’t be sold to the public.”
Their largest project was a butter sculpture of Paris that weighed 2,370 pounds. It was created for last fall’s Best of France festival, organized by the French community in New York City.
Victor said some foods are easier to sculpt than others, but he’s always up for a challenge, as long as it not’s soup.
“I think anything is possible, but some things are just more difficult,” he said. “Ice cream would be tough, because it has to be so cold. If you tried to do hummus, I don’t think it would work. Peanut butter, maybe.”