Cheese Lady Makes Edible Art

Shoppers at the new Easley Sam's Club got a chance to see an artist make a Clemson Tiger and a USC Gamecock – using 500 pounds of cheese.

Sarah Kaufmann, “The Cheese Lady,” began working on the cheese sculpture Wednesday, before the official grand opening of Sam's Club on Thursday.

Kaufmann often works Sam's Club openings.

One shopper asked Kaufmann is she was really sculpting from real cheese.

“It'd be more trouble to get fake cheese than to use real cheese,” Kaufmann said. “If this was yellow Play-Doh or yellow something or other, it would be more expensive than just carving cheese – and then you wouldn't be able to eat it.”

“In the world of cheese, this is a little one,” she said, of the 500-lb cheddar wheel she's working with. “This company, Henning's, makes this cheese up to 12,500 pounds.”

She uses wires to cut through the solid wheel of cheese, to make smaller cylinders and circles and tools for the detail work.

“That's how cheese has been cut for centuries, and still is today,” Kaufmann said.

She uses piano wire because it doesn't stretch or break.

“Cheese is like wine,” Kaufmann said. “It's a living thing. It breathes, it changes, every day.”

She was offering shoppers cheese samples as she carved.

You could say cheese is in Kaufmann's blood. She hails from Wisconsin.

“I always drew as a kid,” Kaufmann said.

She studied graphics and commercial art and became Art Director for the Dairy Farmers of Wisconsin.

“That's where I ran into cheese carving,” Kaufmann said. “One of the first years I was working, we did a slide show, 'The Art of Cheese Making,' on how cheese is made. I needed a title slide, 'What can I do, what can I do?' So I went, 'Oh, I'll do a woodcut … out of cheese. It had a cheese collage and fancy lettering. That was my very first cheese carving in 1981.”

Many years later, she would hire other people to do cheese carvings for the trade group.

“I just loved seeing the carvings,” Kaufmann said. “I said, 'Oh, I can do that!'”

When she left the company, they began hiring her for her cheese carvings on a freelance basis.

“That was 16 years ago,” Kaufmann said. “It just grew and grew and grew to be my full-time job. I'm back doing art. It's fun.”

In 2011, at the Wisconsin State Fair, Kaufmann set the Guinness Book of World Records record for World's Largest Cheese Carving.”

That carving featured a roller coaster, some kids, livestock and symbols of the fair, including beer and bratwurst.

That carving took Kaufmann 39 hours.

“I only had three days to carve it,” she said. “But that's nothing.”

She showed a picture of an 6-foot tall astronaut she carved out of cheese.

“1,900lbs, 90 hours at the grocery store,” Kaufmann said. “That one went to the Air and Space Museum for the 50th anniversary of the moonwalk.”

Guinness has to adjudicate record attempts, so her astronaut didn't qualify.

“I've done bigger ones that that,” she said. “2,500lbs is my biggest so far. That was for the Indiana State Fair, 'The Year of Dairy Cows.' My latest and greatest. It was very cute.”

After she finishes the side with Clemson and USC's mascots, she'll carve area high school mascots into the other side, Kaufmann said.

“The Green Wave, the Hurricanes, a bunch of local high schools, I'll do their mascots,” Kaufmann said. “It'll be very cute.”

Other works include The Grinch, alligators, aircraft carriers, Paul Bunyan, the Red Sox and Santa Claus.

“You never know what you'll find in a wheel of cheese,” Kaufmann said.