Big Cheese Helps Consumers Understand the Dairy Story
For the 10th year the big cheese sculpture has returned to the Indiana State Fair. But is has a new location. At this year’s Fair, the giant cheese sculpture can be found in the Agriculture/Horticulture building. Cheese artist Sarah Kauffman is back working her artistic magic turning 1,400 pounds of cheese into art, but art with a message that reflect this year’s fair theme, Year of the Farmer. “This was a great opportunity to honor the dairy farmers and farm families of Indiana,” she told HAT.
Kauffman says, while she was working on the sculpture, fair visitors stopped by with questions, “They wanted to know where I got these big blocks of cheese. I had to explain that this was the industry standard (640 lb blocks), and that this was the same cheese that got packaged for their local grocery store.” Kauffman’s sculpture features a variety of dairy products as well as dairy cows and the families that take care of those animals and help produce the dairy products we all enjoy.
Deb Osza, with the American Dairy Association of Indiana, told HAT this year the cheese was donated by an Indiana cheese company, “Pace Dairy in Crawfordsville produced the cheese and, along with Kroger, donated it for the sculpture.” She said the sculpture helps tell the story all dairy products not just cheese, “It helps us connect the dots for consumers and how their dairy products are produced and who produces them. It is easy to get their attention with this big detailed sculpture.”
After the Fair, the cheese will be used to produce electricity at BioTown. Kauffman is one of only 3 artists in the US who work with cheese. In 2011 she set the Guinness World Record for
World’s Largest Cheese Sculpture, 925 lbs.