Sculptor Linda Christensen, 79, has spent half a century carving faces into large lumps of butter. The sculptures, which are created in front of an audience of fairgoers, are modeled after winners of The Princess Kay of the Milky Way pageant. Each butter bust can take six hours to finish, and some pageant winners keep butter likenesses for decades. Other winners melt the sculptures down and use the butter for cooking– one even held a community pancake breakfast.
"Now, after churning out more than 500 princess butter heads over nearly five decades, Christensen has decided to retire her knife. She turned her last 90-pound block into a creamy masterpiece at the fairgrounds last month from her glass-enclosed studio.
She's turning over her knife to Gerry Kulzer, an art teacher from Litchfield, Minn., who was chosen as her successor."
Kathy Free for The Washington Post
