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Linda Christensen is believed to be the only butter carver in the United States who works with live models. She is known for carving the likeness of Princess Kay of the Milky Way along with the 11 Princess Kay finalists out of 90-pound blocks of butter at the annual Minnesota State Fair. Each year, her work draws hundreds of thousands of visitors to the Dairy Building, where the (Midwest Dairy Association ) sponsors the butter carving in front of fair goers. The newly crowned Princess Kay and 11 finalists each spend about six hours with Christensen in the rotating 40-degree butter booth, as Christensen carves their likenesses out of butter. Princess Kay sits in the booth on the first day of the fair while the 11 finalists get their likenesses carved over the remaining days of the state fair.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.midwestdairy.com/0p19a204/four-gradea-decades-linda-christensen-celebrating-40th-anniversary-of-sculpting-likenesses-out-of-butter/ )〕 Christensen carves these sculptures out of Grade A salted butter provided by AMPI ((Associated Milk Producers Inc ).), in New Ulm, Minnesota. In 2011, she celebrated 40 years working with Midwest Dairy Association as a butter sculptor. Estimations show that she has carved more than 450 sculptures and 32,000 pounds of butter.〔 Since she has started, the butter sculptures have gone from an oddity to something identified with Minnesota.〔 Butter sculpting at the State Fair was originally initiated to highlight Minnesota’s claim as the “butter capital of the nation.” 〔 In addition to Princess Kay and the finalists, Christensen has sculpted the likenesses of celebrities from David Letterman to former Minnesota First Lady Mary Pawlenty. She even sculpted Conan O’Brien out of white chocolate and used bacon for the hair.〔 One of her commissions was to carve Sesame Street character Big Bird out of a 300-pound block of butter. National Geographic has twice featured her work, and she has turned down requests from Oprah Winfrey and Johnny Carson, who wanted her to rush her carvings in one hour. == A Day at the Minnesota State Fair == Running since 1859, the Minnesota State Fair is one of the largest fairs in the United States that is second only to Texas. It runs for 12 days starting sometime during the end of August and ends on Labor Day which is the first Monday of September. It takes place in Falcon Heights, Minnesota which borders the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul. Christensen arrives just after dawn ever yday at the state fairgrounds wearing long underwear, rubber gloves with a non-porous yellow rain coat over layers of clothing, and woolen socks with crocs. Her routine is to walk the fairgrounds to get herself excited for the day. Starting between 9:00 a.m. and 9:30 a.m., Christensen spends most of her day at the State Fair with the dairy royalty in the 40-degree "butter booth," a rotating walk-in, glass-walled refrigerator. Depending on the princesses’ hair, the carving of the butter sculpture takes six to eight hours per finalist.〔 Christensen said that straight hair is easier than curly hair and short hair is easier than the long. She takes breaks after 90 minutes to warm up her hands, eat greasy fair food, and visit with fair goers. The most difficult part about each sculpture is getting the smile of the princess perfect.〔 The rest of the sculpture she said in an interview with Minnesota Original comes naturally. The butter carving booth is one of the most popular exhibits at the state fair. Half of the princess's hometown and all of her family and friends stand around the rotating cooler waiting for Christensen to turn the blank stare on that 90-pound block of butter into the mirror image of their Princess Kay finalist.〔 While she carves their faces, the princesses hold a microphone and answers question from the public about life on a dairy farm. In between interviews, Christensen talks to the princesses about boys, her children and her grandchildren.〔 She likes working with butter as a medium because it's forgiving and can be "squished" into any form. It's also an attractive, eye-catching surface. She said the salted butter is much nicer to carve than the unsalted butter. Freezing the butter before carving leaves the image looking flaky. She uses a number of tools to mold and shape the butter, such as a long sharp floss-like cord, a number of knives and a 5-gallon pail to put the scraps in for the princesses to take home. She said in one of her interviews with The Wall Street Journal that this job was too big for a butter knife. She uses a similar style to Michelangelo who chipped away at his images.〔 She plans to continue the butter sculpting at the Minnesota State Fair until she is no longer able to use her fingers. Christensen’s legacy helped lead to the creation of the Butter-fy Yourself Facebook App in 2010. The app transforms a simple Facebook profile photo into one of six fun butter personalities, including a dairy princess, a butter hippie, a butter cow, a butter liberty, butter bouffant and butter up, a baseball player.〔(【引用サイトリンク】url=http://www.midwestdairy.com/0p19a200/youonly-butter/ )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Linda Christensen」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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