TORONTO — Not everybody gets excited about a 50 pound block of frozen butter, but for sculptors it offers endless opportunities to have fun and create art.
The Royal Agricultural Winter Fair invites sculptors and art college students to compete in an annual butter sculpture competition. This year, Bailey Henderson of the Ontario College of Art and Design in Toronto won with a whimsical rendering of a pig on a scooter.
“Artistic merit is what we are really working for,” said judge Ineset Dzenis, who works in the film industry.
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The three judges gathered in the cold room where the finished works are on display and deliberated about creations that included a life sized goose spreading it swings, a wolf eyeing food, a calf encircling a baby and a chicken sitting on a mountain of eggs.
Judges Olenka Kleban and Katy Berggren are fulltime artists and have previously entered this show and one at the Canadian National Exhibition with large renderings of Toronto mayor Rob Ford, an aging Elvis Presley and Wayne Gretzky.
At the Royal, artists start with a 50 lb. block of butter and work in a cold room. It takes about eight hours to complete.
The sculptures are eventually thrown away because they cannot be eaten after being manipulated and handled.
Artists use carving tools and their hands. Butter is less forgiving than clay or other sculpting medium. The work can be built on a frame if necessary.
“It is not quite as easy as clay. It can be brittle. To get it to a malleable state takes a lot of work,” said Berggren.
One of her past entries included a Scot in his kilt, which she called Butterscotch. Her busts of Gretzky and Presley for the CNE each took 100 lb. of butter to complete over several days.
Kleban has produced animal projects, including nursing piglets, which she called a Pile of Litter, two cows nestling and a grandmother making perogies. That project required 500 lb. of butter.
