Jan Shepel
Associate Editor
MADISON
What’s better than a big block of cheese? How about a big block of cheese with a pretty picture carved into it? That’s the stock in trade of Sarah Kaufmann – also known as the cheese lady – who makes her living carving murals and shapes out of Wisconsin’s most famous export.
She was on hand in Madison over the weekend to help carve up a ton of cheese for a new grocery store on the city’s east side. Hy-Vee’s deli manager Patrick Tinder said they were planning a promotion with Henning Cheese of Kiel and decided to go big this year.
“We ordered over three tons of cheese,” he said. The promotion was coordinated with the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board and they got Kaufmann to decorate one of the mammoth blocks.
Kaufmann, formerly Sarah Baumann, dressed for the part with a cheese-style top hat, Holstein-patterned pants – with a tail – and apron and accessories that included cheese-shaped earrings and a cheese-shaped wedding ring that peeked through her food-safety gloves.
The Cheese Lady was born in Manitowoc, and loved to draw as a kid, she said, so she went to Madison Area Technical College in Madison for commercial art, graduating in 1975. That led to a 15-year career as the art director for the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board, where she often hired cheese carving specialists.
“That’s how,” she says, “cheese carving found me.” After leaving the milk board she went into cheese carving full time.
She praised the texture and flavor of the Henning’s cheese she worked on all weekend. The mammoth cheese was 2,000 pounds on Friday and was sliced crosswise so the store would be able to take pieces out for sale. Kaufmann said the fifth-generation cheese factory in Kiel is now using a 100-year-old recipe that current cheese maker Kerry Henning dug out of the family papers and refined for today’s tastes and ingredients.
“He’s a Master Cheesemaker, but he’s also an artist and a scientist,” she said. “This Cheddar has a beautiful depth of flavor and is a beautiful example of why Wisconsin cheese is famous. He’s passing on the deep love and family care of cheese making.”
Kaufmann said she considers the Henning cheese an artisan product because there are few cheese makers who produce the mammoth cheese in small batches. She said the piece she was working on represented 20,000 pounds of milk.
The cheese was drawing rave reviews from visitors all weekend, who gathered to watch her work and sample the Henning’s handiwork. “This cheese has a quality and consistency and they should be very proud of it,” Kaufmann said.
The theme of her cheese mural, produced with simple wire tools that are normally used for ceramic work, was March Madness. “The store decided that if they were going to do a March Madness promotion they’d do it with a splash,” she said.
The mural included Bessie, a bovine basketball player, and Bucky Badger along with school mascots from the various Madison high schools – Madison East Purgolder, Madison Memorial Spartan and the Monona Grove Eagles.
Kaufmann’s work sometimes involves carving the face of a large block of cheese as she did this weekend, but some of her commissions are more like free-standing cheese architecture. She recently worked on a replica of Italy’s leaning tower of Pisa for the community of Niles, Ill., which is near Chicago.
That community has had a half-size replica of Italy’s famous leaning tower since the 1930s, where it served as a roadside attraction. More recently that village established a sister-city pact with Pisa, Italy and renovated the Illinois version of the tower.
To do that type of cheese carving, Kaufmann said she must establish an internal superstructure of rods and platforms. The last thing you’d want at a cheese promotion is to have the carving fall over on someone, she said with a characteristic smile.
A recent commission was a life-size Santa Claus for a grocery store in Milwaukee in December. She also recently worked on a three-day project in astronaut Neil Armstrong’s home town in Ohio to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the first walk on the moon.
“That was a natural, since the old wives’ tale about the moon being made of cheese,” she said.
Some of her work is large, like the moon walk and Santa commissions, while other pieces are delicate and use various types and colors of cheese to create different effects.
Asked by one passing Hy-Vee customer if she carves ice, she said no. “Only cheese and I can’t keep up with that!” she said. “Cheese takes me everywhere.”
Many of her commissions are for weddings and celebrations where she’s called on to carve the likeness of the bride and groom into cheese. She’s a fixture at several state fair venues and does a lot of her work in supermarkets.
For more information, go to www.sarahcheeselady.com.
