Do you like butter?

Yeah, oh yeah, the best thing in the world.

Put it on anything and it makes it better.

Mmm, butter.

Hello everyone, I'm Dylan Tharris and this is Atlas Obscura, celebration of the world's

strange, incredible and wondrous butters.

Today, my friend and colleague, Gastro Obscura writer, Sam O'Brien, takes us on a

journey to my home state, to Minnesota, to explore the ultimate edible art.

I knew that Minnesota has its own butter sculptures that some like clay are the best in the world,

so I knew I had to see them.

That's right folks, we're here to talk about the greatest place on planet Earth, the

butter sculpting room at the Minnesota State Fair, well I'm so excited.

More on butter sculpting after this.

I grew up in Minnesota and that meant a yearly pilgrimage to the State Fair and there

was always this moment of walking into the butter sculpting room.

It's a relatively large room, it's cold and you would press against the glass, this

circular room at the center to watch the live butter sculpting going on.

And as the process goes on over the course of the State Fair, they create more and more

of these butter busts and these are spectacular.

They are about one and a half times size of reality, so they're actually huge heads,

they're much bigger than a normal human head.

And they're shockingly realistic.

...