Jim Victor and Marie Pelton are a husband-and-wife team who makes sculptures from various food media. They have worked together for over 15 years. They have a long history of creating butter sculptures for State and County Fairs and Expositions as well as an extensive portfolio of food sculptures commissioned for corporate and public relations events.
We talked with Jim and Marie “The Butter Sculptor King and Queen.”
Q – I saw my first butter sculptor at the New York State Fair in 1969 I don’t think you did that sculptor.
Jim – No, I didn’t.
Marie – That might have been one of the very first years that they had the butter sculptor there at the New York State Fair. It was called the cow jumping over the moon. That was the theme. Actually we re-created that theme for them twice since we’ve been doing the fair. They celebrate that anniversary every 20 years or so.
Q – How did this whole idea of butter sculpturing come about?
Marie – The history of butter sculptor in America I do believe started with Caroline Brooks. I call her an artist. She was really very skilled. She lived in the turn of the 19th century. She lived in I think Iowa and was a farmer’s wife. So basically she was not a professional artist but when times got tough on the farm and I guess they didn’t have a very good harvest one year she decided she would do something that would create more income for the family. So, what was popular at the time was these fancy butter molds that they used to use to press butter in. So, she decided she would go one step further and create a dimensional sculpture out of butter. So, I guess she had the material on the farm because they had cows. So she took her butter sculpture to the local fairs and people really took notice of it because it was pretty incredible to look at. The photographs that we have of her work are very good. I really like what she did.
Jim – She was a pretty accomplished artist.
Marie – Very accomplished. I wish I knew more about her but I think there’s only a certain amount of information available about her. She showed her butter sculptures at was it the Chicago exposition Jim?
Jim – I’m not sure which one.
Marie – In 1876. It was a reclining, sleeping female figure so it was really quite beautiful. She was asked to re-do that time and time again. I think the New York Times at the time said this image would make her famous. Anyway, that’s the history, the state of it in America but butter sculptures also go back hundreds of years in the Buddhist cultures.
Jim -Yeah. The Tibetan monks have been making butter sculptures and continue to make them even today.
Marie – They make them as a symbol of life’s fragility. So, it’s symbolic for them, sort of like their sand mandalas just basically something that is ethereal. It’s not going to be kept. It’s not permanent. It’s just like everything else in life. It comes and goes and has its own lifecycle.
Q – When you’re doing a butter sculpture for say the New York State Fair, how does that work in terms of an idea? Do they tell you what they want or do you present them with ideas?
Jim – In New York State they definitely come up with their ideas they’re very dairy oriented there. So whatever idea you have is coming from them. We are the ones who are the designers of the thing ultimately but, they promote their ideas about dairy. It’s a dairy promotion thing.
Q -Who would “they” be?
Jim – The American Dairy Association.
Marie – North East division. So AMD and E. Nowadays they really are very hands-on about the kind of message they want to send to the public through the butter a sculpture. I think in the past early on we were able to conceive of the sculptural ideas for them but with the American Dairy Association they like to promote the dairy products. There is always got to be some element of that going on in there.
Q – You’re talking about someone in the marketing or promotion department?
Jim – Yeah. That’s right. Exactly.
Marie – It’s definitely a team of people that put their bid in there for what should be the theme for the year.
Jim – Right.
Q – How much competition is there in this field of yours? Do you have it pretty much to yourself or are there other people providing this service to other fairs?
Jim – There are other people doing it. In fact we took a job away from somebody.
Marie -Well, not purposely.
Jim – I don’t mean that. Her husband was very sick at the time. She left and she couldn’t do the job anymore. So, we came in and took the job because she couldn’t do it at that time but, she’s gone on to do many more fairs at other places across the country.
Marie – Yeah. So basically there are not probably that many people that do butter sculptures but there are others besides us. There’s different folks that do it in the Midwest. Duffy Lyon.
Jim – Well, she’s passed. She was very famous.
Marie – That torch was passed down to her granddaughter or niece and basically there’s kind of two categories I would say for the people that do some of the butter sculptures. Some really come from an agricultural background. Maybe they have a dairy farm. Maybe they work at the fair and they liked to do it and it’s sort of a hobby. So, I guess I would call them folk artists. Then there’s the category of professional artist went to take on some of this as business, as a job and do some of the fairs as well. So, there are other food artists of course around the world and maybe they work in different materials. The thing about Jim and I is we work in a lot of different materials so we don’t just do butter. We also do cheese. We do fruit and vegetable sculptures. We do chocolate. We do different kinds of materials that round out our business basically.
Q – How many fairs do you to do each year?
Jim – We do usually between I would say 10 to 15 events. They are not all fairs. We do a lot of work for corporate entities like Mars, Hershey’s, all these different companies and it’s usually through PR Firms.
Marie -We’ve done some butter sculptures for PR events for Kellers, President, Organic Valley and for Land O Lakes and Cabot’s too.
Jim – But, also we get other jobs that are completely not corporate. For example we just did a portrait of a guy in Los Angeles who was a big Internet star. They wanted a cheese portrait of him. It’s for this app that’s called cheese.
Marie – Yeah. That was more of a corporate promotion I think.
Jim – Yeah, I guess that is sort of a corporate too.
Marie – So, as for the number of Fairs we do pre-year, actually we’ve done, will do as many as we can, right? But, not every fair has us back on a continuous basis. So, we’ve done the New Mexico fair once. We did the Orange County Fair probably twice, Delmar we did once, L.A. we did a couple of times.
Jim – No. I think L.A. was once.
Marie – Okay we’ve been all over. Fresno, Nebraska.
Jim – Waco, Texas.
Marie – Miami, Dade County.
Q – So, there’s a lot of traveling involved?
Jim – Oh, yeah. We’ve traveled a lot
Marie – Tampa, South Carolina, North Carolina.
Jim – The border fest for 10 years.
Marie – There are so many. Even Prince Edward Island in Canada. We did a butter sculpture there for Old Home Week. We definitely have done so, so many different fairs around the country but our mainstays are the New York State Fair, it’s a biggie, and the Pennsylvania Farm Show and Tulare County Fair in California.
Q – I was going to ask if there’s enough work to keep you busy, but, it sure sounds like there is.
Jim – Yeah.
Marie – Yeah. Sometimes we do have to look for it but, a lot of times especially recently a lot of times people come to us and find us especially for the corporate events.
Q – I always thought you got into some temperature controlled room where the butter awaits you and you start sculpting away. But, actually the butter is poured over what cardboard? Is that how it works?
Jim – No. What you’re thinking of is the armatures. Those armatures we use are not cardboard. There welded steel l and plywood usually. They’re real strong structures. You have to have those structures to support the butter otherwise you won’t have a butter sculpture.
Marie – The butter sculpture would not be able to stand up if you didn’t have anything underneath it because it’s a soft material.
Q – So, the butter is poured over the armature?
Jim – No. We don’t pour it. What happens is this: Butter is a substance that is controlled by temperature. At a certain temperature your butter is like clay. So, just like a sculptor works with clay, we work with butter in the same way, like keeping it at the right temperature. That’s how it’s done. We have 55 pound blocks of butter that we cut into slabs with a wire tool and then we start to use it. You can use it basically like clay. We push it onto the forms and model it with modeling tools.
Q – You bring your own tools and they supply the butter?
Jim – They supply the butter and we supply the armature and the tools and go to work.
Q – How long does it usually take to create a butter sculpture? Let’s take for example the butter sculpture you did at this year’s (2018) New York State Fair.
Jim – It’s ten days. Sometimes it’s a little longer, but, usually ten days with both of us working but, also its ten days of making the armatures as well. An armature can be just as time consuming as the sculpture itself.
Q – Jim, when you were in college they didn’t have classes in butter sculpturing. So, what did you take to prepare you for this career?
Jim – I went to school at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
Marie – And so did I.
Jim – And Marie did as well. I was there in the 60’s. Back then and even today you basically have three courses of study. There’s sculpture, painting and print making. I was a sculpture major. That’s basically what you need to understand butter sculpture.
Marie – Our education is based in figurative art. You study the figure.
Jim – Everyday you’re doing figures from ‘live’ models and you’re building up sculptures in clay with armatures. So, it’s exactly the same kind of thing.
Marie – It’s an extensive area of study, of serious study. The Pennsylvania Academy is a four year certificate program.
Jim – Well, not anymore. They we’re.
Marie – It’s four years Jim. It’s four years to go through the program for Fine Arts.
Jim – I agree.
Q – Is a Master’s Degree offered as well in Fine Arts?
Marie – You can get a Masters from the Pennsylvania Academy Fine Arts.
Jim – But, at the time I was there you could not.
Marie – But when I was there you could.
Jim – Right, I know. So, it changed over the years.
Q – When you two got out of college, what did you do for a paycheck?
Jim – Well, first thing I did when I got out was I started to think about how I could use sculpture to make a living other than teaching. I did teach as well. But, what I did is I started a portfolio of sculptures of well-known people, politicians. They were kind of caricatures and I began to go around to art agents, excuse me, art directors and publications and show them my work. Out of that I got some illustrational jobs using sculpture, like for the New York Times in the 1970’s. I did Henry Kissinger for the New York Times when he was traveling around the world. I did Charles Ives in a thing about music. I did Prime Minister Heath. I did Jimmy Carter. I did a bunch of people. It was from that, that I got into food sculpture because somebody ultimately asked me to make chocolate portraits of Mickey Rooney and Ann Miller for Sugar Baby’s, a Broadway show. That’s how I got into food. That was the transition from regular sculpture into food.
Q – And, Marie?
Marie – Oh, when I got out of school, actually I had been working with Jim even before I got out of school doing some work with food stuff. But, I was also working my way through school doing kitchen design and so I think I was still doing the kitchen design when I graduated and I really wanted to concentrate on what I had worked on so hard at the Academy and I wanted to have my own business. I really liked kitchen design. Soon after I started working full-time with Jim and we would go to Las Vegas, the Convention Center there. There was a big fair exposition and we would try to drum up jobs for ourselves. So, eventually things started to happen pretty quickly, I’m thinking in 2002.
Jim – Yeah.
Marie – So, we were kind of getting a lot more jobs.
Jim – Right. Marie was not working that much with me. Some jobs she did. But, she was doing a lot of kitchen design. And then as things picked up she started to work with me full-time and it became a full-time job.
Q – And so, the future would be what for you two? More work?
Marie – Well, we want to continue to work, sure. Also, I think the future is teaching some courses. I think you briefly mentioned nowadays you can go and learn how to do butter sculpture, but there’s really no place specifically out there. No Butter Sculpture Academy or Food Sculpture Academy. So really in the future I think we’re going to be doing some food sculpture tv on YouTube. We are going to be putting together some tutorials on how to learn some of the techniques we have developed over the many years we have been in business. So, basically teaching people how to do what we do. I’m not sure how much interest there is out there for people as far as do they want to be a food sculptor. I don’t know if you have a sense of what that might be.
Q – What skills would a person need to do the job you’re doing?
Jim – First of all you have to be an artist. You have to be interested in being an artist.
Marie – You have to be able to basically make it into a business. You have to take it really seriously. When you’re dealing with people that hire you they rely on you to be there, to be able to create something within a very tight deadline. It can be kind of stressful. So you have to be kind of business minded and work pretty well with people and be able to work in tight deadlines. Those are some of the characteristics you might need if you’re going to be in this business.
Q – I’ve got an idea, why don’t you start your own Academy?
Marie – That would be a lot of fun actually because there’s a lot to the food sculpture business. Like Jim was just mentioning you do have to have very honed skills as an artist and so I think that would be part of the curriculum, teaching how to do cows. Teaching how to do farm animals. That certainly is a lot of fun. I would love to teach that.
Jim – Probably if we lived in a farm setting it would make it a lot easier.
Marie – Which is something we have in mind. I can teach people how to do butter cows and butter horses and butter goats, right?
Jim – Sometimes we’ve done that actually. We’ve actually gone out to farms and taken our clay and armatures out into the field and made sculptures right from cows directly there.
Official website: jimvictormariepelton.com
