Professional Cheese Sculptor Turns Cheddar Into Art

Cheese is wonderful in so many ways: it’s rich, it’s creamy, it’s delicious, it’s nutritious, and you can melt it on top of vegetables to make them taste better. But did you know that you can also make beautiful art out of cheese? Indeed you can! And nobody does it better than Sarah Kaufmann, aka “the Cheese Lady,” who is one of three professional cheese sculptors in the country. (There are only three? It seems like there should be a lot more than that!)

Kaufmann makes art out of cheese for all kinds of occasions—weddings, Super Bowl parties, and the like. And her work isn’t limited to cheese-related subjects:

Her creations have ranged from a life-size Santa Claus to a 6-foot-long model of the USS Ronald Reagan aircraft carrier.

This week she sculpted Veteran’s Day statue inside an Arlington, Virginia grocery store. The work, carved from two 640-pound blocks of cheddar, depicts “a soldier carrying an injured comrade over his shoulders.” It took her 50-some hours to carve, and it will last up to eight weeks.

She may have a great gift for cheese carving, but she didn’t set out to do this. “The cheese found me,” she says. Even though it’s hard work, it sounds far more fun than most jobs:

It’s much more delightful than working with wood or stone. You can snack while you work.

That is one very nice perk! I wonder if she’d carve an edible Christmas tree? It would be so much more interesting and tasty than a Blue Spruce, and it would probably last longer too. The only downside is that it might not smell as nice…