Where's The Butter At This Year's Tulsa State Fair?

By Rick Wells, The News On 6

TULSA, OK -- It's midway through this year's Tulsa State Fair. There are lots of exhibits and lots of rides, but one of the fan favorites is missing.

Where is the butter sculpture?

Thousands of folks from all over this part of the country come to Tulsa in October for the Tulsa State Fair. Many of them look forward to seeing what Sharon BuMann has created out of hundreds of pounds of unsalted butter.

This year they're going home disappointed.

My first stop at the fair is not food nor is it the rides. I head for the lower level of the QuikTrip Center.

"It's usually right...it's right...it's...not here."

Where's the butter sculpture? Apparently that's what lots of people are asking.  

"We've had a lot of unhappy people," said Shannon Abbott.

Shannon Abbott is the superintendent of the Fine Arts area she says the No. 1 question, by far this year is: "Where is it?"

"Some people have been very mean," Abbott said.

That's a shame, but people take their butter sculpture seriously

"I miss it. Where is it?"

For as long as most of us remember Sharon BuMann has come to the fair and created art out of butter.

"Maybe she'll be back next year," said Beverley Minor, supervisor of the antiques section.

Maybe.

Beverley Minor is showing me around her antique exhibit including a jewelry collection she says is made from woven hair.

"They would save their hair when they brushed it, and this is what they did," Minor said.

Interesting - but not a butter sculpture.

The ladies at the information desk point out the Central Hall kids area where there is a very marvelously creative sand sculpture.

The sand sculpture is great. It's got animals: horses a pig, a little bunny riding an airplane. It's really good.

I just can't believe it's not butter.

So, what happens now?

Well, at the end of every fair, the folks get together and evaluate what worked and what didn't. If sheer numbers of complaints sway fair managers at all, butter sculpting has a good chance of being back in 2010.