It's too bad Sarah Kaufmann didn't stick around Madison for a few more days. She could have stood in front of Wright Middle School on Wednesday and carved a sculpture of Barack Obama out of cheese.

But Kaufmann - known far and wide as the "Cheese Lady" - had to leave Madison, where she carved a Bucky Badger out of a 1,013-pound wheel of medium cheddar last weekend.

Kaufmann was spending Monday and Tuesday at her parents' house in Manitowoc, and Wednesday she's scheduled to land in Pittsburgh, where she'll spend a few days creating the Pittsburgh skyline from a 1,000-pound piece of cheddar to help unveil an Eagle Market District grocery. Then it's on to Austin, where a large slab of chipotle cheddar awaits.

As it happens, Kaufmann has sculpted presidents from cheese.

"I've done Mount Rushmore many times," she was saying Tuesday.

There is, in fact, very little that Kaufmann has not crafted from cheese in nearly three decades as a sculptor. She has conjured a six-foot-long aircraft carrier, a 120-pound Mickey Mouse, a life-size astronaut, a 12,000-pound dragon, as well as celebrities like Paul Newman, Jay Leno and - how could it be otherwise? - Brett Favre.

Kaufmann's Madison visit - she was sculpting here in celebration of the opening of a new Hy-Vee store on East Washington Avenue - was in fact a homecoming.

Kaufmann first came to Madison in the 1970s, earning a degree in commercial art from MATC in 1975. She lived here for more than two decades, working for the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board and other groups associated with the dairy industry. In 1996, Kaufmann relocated to Cincinnati, as manager of creative services for Jungle Jim's International Market.

Kaufmann dates her first cheese carving experience to 1981, when she was working for the American Dairy Association of Wisconsin as it was preparing an educational slide show called "The Art of Cheesemaking."

The creative team was tossing ideas around for the title slide, and Kaufmann said, "Why don't we carve the letters out of cheese?"

Everyone liked the idea, and Kaufmann stayed up all night carving to make the deadline.

"I still didn't think that this was what I would be doing, carving cheese," she said. "I thought it was a clever way to do the title slide."

She carved at trade shows and other industry events, but her freelance carving career didn't really take off until 1996, when she left the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board and signed on with Jungle Jim's in Ohio.

"I have this one crazy thing that I do," she told them at the time. "I carve cheese."

The Jungle Jim folks said, "That should be fine."

Almost immediately, Kaufmann was hired to come to the Sargento plant in Plymouth and carve a 640-pound Green Bay Packer. It was the team's Super Bowl season, and Sargento knew a good thing when they saw it. They next sent Kaufmann to the Super Bowl, where she carved four 40-pound heads of the Fox "NFL Live" broadcast team: James Brown, Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long and Ronnie Lott.

She became a full-time cheese sculptor four years ago. Her husband, retired Navy Commander Bill Parry, whom she married in July, does her scheduling, and they split their time between Cincinnati and San Diego.

It was a sculpture that brought them together. Kaufmann was flying to San Diego for Sargento several years ago with a six-foot cheese sculpture of the USS Ronald Reagan for the ship's home-porting ceremony.

Kaufmann was studying a blueprint of the aircraft carrier when the passenger in the next seat mentioned that he was in the Navy. It was Parry. "We wound up going out for dinner," Kaufmann said. They married July 4 in Manitowoc, amid several pirate-themed cheese sculptures, courtesy of the bride.

Kaufmann said she'll be back in Wisconsin in December, at a Roundy's grocery in Milwaukee. She'll be the one next to the life-size Santa Claus made out of cheese.

Login to post your comment. If you don't have an account, you may register for one.