
It was a warm summer day but Malorie Thorson was dressed for winter as Gerry Kulzer sculpted a likeness of her head from a large block of butter Thursday in keeping with a 60-year-old tradition on the opening day of the Minnesota State Fair.
Thorson, a 20-year-old from the town of Waverly, was crowned as the 72nd Princess Kay of the Milky Way on Wednesday night. And her first official duty as the goodwill ambassador for the state's 1,800 dairy farm families was to bundle up and sit in a rotating glassed-in studio at 40 degrees F (4 Celsius) as fairgoers gathered to watch Kulzer turn a 90-pound (41-kilogram) block of salted butter into art.