Customers At Sprouts Say "Cheese"

and Dublin residents had the chance to witness food art at its finest on Saturday when internationally renowned cheese artist Sarah Kaufmann made a guest appearance. 

Nicknamed “the cheese lady”, Kaufmann exhibited her talents to locals, carving a 308 pound portrait of the grocery store.

However, this gargantuan cheddar masterpiece doesn’t compare to most of Kaufmann’s other pieces, which include a life-sized astronaut and replica of football legend John Madden’s head. 

The Wisconsin native’s career began with advertising graphics before she became the art director for the Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin. 

“Cheese kind of found me,” said Kaufmann. 

“The cheese lady” was inspired by the work of the artists they hired and fifteen years later she was hired as a freelance artist. Her moonlight work rapidly transformed into a full time job that now allows her to travel the country for sporting events, trade shows and food and wine festivals.

Dublin’s newest grocery store, Sprouts, sells the same Wisconsin cheddar cheese Kaufmann uses for the vast majority of her creations.  At the event, spectators were able to sample the cheddar cheese and consume the sculpture’s leftover scraps. 

“Shoppers eat them and they buy a chunk because it’s so good,” said Kaufmann. “It’s really neat, people walk in and are all 'huh?' because they’ve never seen cheese that big and it is uncommon. It’s a happy thing.”

Kaufmann’s pieces of art vary in weight from two ounces to 10,000 pounds and on occasion she’ll spend an entire week on the oversized ones. It isn’t unusual to see two or three types of cheese used in the same sculpture, ranging from the typical Wisconsin cheddar to bleu and feta.

“Cheddar is the one people use 99 percent of the time because it’s dense and consistent like clay, it holds up, it comes in big sizes, it tastes great, the price is right,” she said. “I carve also provolone, asiago, gruyere, which is very dense and solid, white cheddar, parmesan will work. Feta and brie don’t cooperate.”

In August, “the cheese lady” will set a Guinness World Record for the largest cheese sculpture when she carves a 1,000 pound, 32 x 48 inch piece at the Wisconsin State Fair, where a world record for the largest crème puff will also be featured.

“That’s going to be a salute to the Wisconsin State Fair, it’s there 160^th anniversary so they’re celebrating that.  That’ll be my theme, my focus and it’ll have lots of symbols of the fair,” she Kaufmann. 

Kaufmann has been fortunate enough to stick with her Wisconsin cheddar roots and entertain through food art. 

“I tout the horn for Wisconsin cheese because it’s fabulous,” she said.