Our recent “Reel Minnesota Gift Guide”—featuring Amy Adams’ likeness, immortalized in butter—sparked significant curiosity among our readership. How, precisely, does one achieve such exquisite portraiture using a perishable medium? To answer the call, we sat down with the visionary behind the sculpture, Minnesota State Fair Official Butter Sculptor Gerry Kulzer.
Gerry is a man of dual crafts: an art teacher and a true artisan. We delve into his unique origin story with the butter block, the technical and aesthetic challenges of capturing a star like Ms. Adams, and on a deeper note, what the resilient, family-centric Spirit of Minnesota truly means to him. This conversation is a delightful blend of artistry and heart.
Photo by Nate Ryan for The New York Times
Q: Look at you, wearing a tie for our chat. Tell me about your “day job” as an art teacher.
GERRY KULZER (GK): I just got back from teaching. I’m one of the few teachers who still wears a tie. I tell my students it’s because teaching them is an occasion, like a wedding or a celebration. I’m very fortunate to teach 7th- through 12th-grade art. It’s fun; it’s honestly the second-best job in the world.
Q: The second-best?
GK: Oh yes, the first best is being the Official Butter Sculptor at the Minnesota State Fair.
Courtesy of Minnesota State Fair
Q: How did you first get started carving butter at the Minnesota State Fair?
GK: I started watching Linda Christensen (State Fair Butter Sculptor from 1972-2022) work at the Fair back in the ’90s when I was in college. I was captivated by her process. Years later, I contacted Midwest Dairy about replacing her. They called me back for an audition: carving a 90-pound block of butter. The following year I did an apprenticeship with Linda, and we just meshed perfectly. A few weeks after that Fair, they called and gave me the job in 2022.
Q: What did you think when I reached out to you? Walk us through the process of approaching that butter block of Amy Adams for our gift guide. What are the biggest technical challenges?
GK: That was an awesome, cool concept. I love it when people bring those ideas. The biggest challenge is always working from just photographs. You lose that three-dimensional depth. Thankfully, she’s famous, so I researched video clips and played them on a large reference TV in my studio; that helped immensely. Butter itself is challenging because it’s flaky when cold and oily when too soft. I have to work in a walk-in fridge, where the lighting is horrible, then pull the sculpture out to see the true highlights and shadows, then pop it back in to firm up. It’s a constant battle with the heat and the medium’s translucency.
Q: Let’s talk Minnesota winter. Since we know you as a State Fair guy, what’s your favorite thing to do when the cold weather sets in?
GK: My favorite winter activity is sledding. With five kids, it was always so much fun. We have a bit of a hill on the street from our house and that was fun, but there is a great big hill in Darwin, it’s a workout going up, but super fun going down. I just loved watching them zoom down.
Q: When was the last time you went sledding?
GK: It was just last winter. My oldest daughters came home from college, and when the snow hit, they grabbed the inner tube sleds. I jumped on one! It’s great, because it’s soft and I don’t hurt myself as an old man. It was wonderful.
Q: On a deeper note, Minnesota Monthly is dedicated to the Spirit of Minnesota. What does that idea mean to you?
GK: It means family, really. We’re an agricultural community, raised with family and family support, and that shows through in the whole state. The kids where I teach are so respectful and family-oriented. I think that’s why we have that “Minnesota Nice”—it’s just a fantastic part of the state, how friendly and good people really are.
Photo by Clettis Wright; Styling by Jocelyn Kracke
