St. Louis artist shapes beloved state fair tradition
STORY by Paul Newton
PHOTOS by Paul Newton and Sara Schafer
A week before most fairgoers arrive at the Missouri State Fairgrounds in August, Ander Weis is dressed for winter. There is a knit hat pulled low, a face covering and layers of warm clothing. It is all needed for a week spent inside a 35-degree walk-in cooler.
The artist isn’t beating the summer heat; instead, Ander is carrying on a Missouri State Fair tradition that tens of thousands of fairgoers will enjoy. Since 2021, Ander has been the sculptor responsible for the one-of-a-kind butter cow that has become a state fair fixture. Midwest Dairy commissions Ander to make the cow and selects the design. But once the butter arrives, Ander’s work is a cold, quiet test of patience, anatomy and faith in the material.
Ander’s spouse, Terry, works alongside the artist during the build. They spend the first day pressing butter into an armature — a homemade structure of PVC pipe and chicken wire — to make the beginnings of a cow. At first, it does not look much like one.
“The end of day two and day three, that’s when it looks like a lump of something, and not just this little weird, wiry alien, which is really encouraging,” Ander says.
Accident and Audacity
Ander, a south St. Louis resident, says the unique job came “by accident and audacity.”
Ander was teaching art classes in 2020 when a cousin connected to the annual agriculture showcase mentioned the previous butter sculptor had retired and asked if Ander knew anyone with sculpture skills who might be interested in taking on a new medium.
“I was apparently filled with audacity, and I said I could do that, because I said yes to everything,” Ander says.
The first attempt wasn’t easy, but it gave Ander a place to start. With a master’s degree in fine art and a background in anatomy, drawing and painting, Ander had the training to understand form. The problem was that hundreds of pounds of butter isn’t exactly the medium you’re taught to sculpt in school.
“I learned a lot of things on the way,” Ander says. “I think it’s a testament to creativity that you can see each cow being an improvement from the past year.”
Stacy Dohle has seen that progress year after year. As manager of farmer relations for Midwest Dairy, a regional organization representing dairy farm families, Stacy helps oversee the butter cow and the organization’s presence at the Missouri State Fair.
The Gerken Dairy Center has been Midwest Dairy’s fair home since 1999. The association sees the sculpture as a way to celebrate Missouri’s dairy farmers.
“It’s just to promote the dairy industry and the dairy farmers of Missouri; it’s something fun,” Stacy says. “It’s a tradition that families come to the Gerken Dairy Center to see it and take their picture with it.”
It’s All in the Butter
The design starts months before the fair. After the fair theme is announced, Ander designs two ideas. One usually ties into the theme and another might be a more whimsical idea. Those sketches go to Midwest Dairy, where Stacy and the team look them over. This year’s design ties baseball to America’s 250th anniversary, with a butter cow dressed for the national pastime.
Once the design is chosen, Ander begins with an armature as the base. In the early years, the St. Louisan tried to build more of the form into the frame. That turned out to be the wrong approach. “Each year the frame has become simplified, because I was trying to do a lot of work ahead of time, but you just can’t,” Ander says. “It’s all in the butter.”
The sculpture uses about 600 pounds of unsalted butter, delivered in 55-pound blocks. The finished cow is not solid butter — the armature gives it something to hold on to — but there is still plenty of butter involved.
On the first day, Ander’s only goal is to cover the frame with butter and let it harden overnight before going further. That lesson came the hard way. “I didn’t do that the first year,” Ander says. “I came in the next day and the whole side of the cow had fallen off.”
After the first layer sets, the sculpture takes shape. Ander and Terry build mass, add muscles and slowly turn the rough form into something recognizable. Terry helps with much of the heavy butter work. Ander focuses on the details: the faces, hands, pose and expressions.
“The muscles make or break it; you don’t notice unless it’s wrong,” Ander says. “You can look at something and be like, ‘I don’t know what’s wrong with it, but there’s something off.’”
The work takes five to seven days, with Ander and Terry spending about 10 hours a day in the building. The cooler requires breaks, hand warmers and a set of clothes used nowhere else. “I have a whole set of gear that I only use once a year because it all smells like butter,” Ander says.
Made for the Window
Near the end, work slows down. Big changes give way to tiny ones. Ander says nearly two days can be spent smoothing the surface with sculpting tools, removing holes and rough spots from the butter.
After days in the cold and countless adjustments, fixes and problems solved, Ander and Terry call the job done. Their long hours and hard work create a sculpture that belongs to them for a few days. When they head home to St. Louis, it belongs to everyone else. “At the very end, I send Midwest Dairy a photo and say, ‘I did my best. Here you go,’” Ander says.
For those 11 days in August, Stacy hears the reactions: “Wow.” “That’s cool.” “That’s the best one yet.” Families stop for pictures. Kids ask questions. Someone always wants to know what happens to the butter after the fair — it’s frozen and reused for a few years.
“We want to create great moments for them,” Stacy says. “We want to make sure that they leave with a good memory and a good experience when they come into the dairy building.”
Ander’s fondest memory comes before anyone orders their first corn dog, shows their prized pig or attends a concert. It’s a quiet moment in the dairy center. Near the end of the build, before calling it complete, the sculpture is turned toward the window, where it will remain for the fair. Ander and Terry sit and look at the thing that took shape one cold handful of butter at a time.
“We’ll take our break, we’ll have a cup of coffee and we’ll look at it together,” Ander says. “We’re obviously looking for any changes we might have missed. But really, we’re just sitting there together looking at this thing that we made.”
During the Missouri State Fair, the Gerken Dairy Center is open from 9 a.m. to 8 p.m., Aug. 13-22 and 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Aug. 23.
Email Paul Newton at pnewton@ruralmissouri.coop.