Pennsylvania Farm Show's butter sculpture highlights state's dairy farmers

The Pennsylvania Farm Show, which runs through Jan. 15 in Harrisburg, highlights the importance of the state’s agriculture industry. And one of the largest segments of that industry is dairy products.

So it only makes sense that the show’s massive annual butter sculpture, commissioned by the show and sponsored by the American Dairy Association North East, would also celebrate Pennsylvania’s dairy farmers.

The sculpture was carved from a half-ton of butter over the course of two weeks by artists Jim Victor and Marie Pelton.

Victor, 77, of Conshohocken outside Philadelphia, said he got into food sculpting in the 1980s.

“I had an opportunity to make chocolate portrait busts of Mickey Rooney and Anne Miller,” Victor said. “It was a successful venture and influenced my subsequent choices on my career path.”

Victor has been sculpting with food ever since. The medium presents constant challenges depending on the raw materials and textures of the food being used.

“We’ve been asked to make creations in food materials that sometimes we know nothing about,” Victor said. “Learning about your material is the starting point.”

Since 2000, Victor has been working with Pelton, a graduate of the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

“There’s quite a lot of work that goes into the butter sculpture even prior to us getting (to the farm show),” Pelton said. “There’s a lot of planning involved, and also creating the under-structure for the sculpture.”

The 2022 sculpture shows three dairy farm workers toasting the fruits of their labor with glasses of — what else? — milk, as a farmhouse rises on a hill in the background.

Victor said working with butter has its upside and downside.

“It’s very sensitive to temperature changes, and therefore can be worked very soft and loose, or hard and carvable,” he said. “The negatives are the short shelf life, and it’s translucent so it can be hard to see the surface.”

The sculpture, along with the show itself, celebrates Pennsylvania’s nearly 5,400 dairy farmers, according to state agriculture Secretary Russell Redding, who touted this year’s show theme, “Harvesting More.”

“Over the past 22 months, we have learned we are stronger and more resilient through our combined efforts to feed the commonwealth,” Redding said. “We are ‘Harvesting More,’ together, to provide for Pennsylvanians through good times and bad. It takes all of us working together to ensure a bountiful, food-secure and sustainable world.”

After the farm show is over on Jan. 15, butter from the sculpture will be taken to Reinford Farms in central Pennsylvania, where it will become part of the farm’s program turning food waste into renewable energy.

Victor said it’s been quite a ride since he first started made Rooney’s face out of chocolate.

“It’s been lucrative and it’s provided me with many highly creative moments since then,” he said.

For more on Victor and Pelton’s work, see JimVictorMariePelton.com. For more on the Pennsylvania Farm Show, see Farmshow.pa.gov.