The Butter Sculptor of Snohomish
How a farmer's wife from the Arkansas wilderness used humble tools to carve her way into the art world.
Mrs. Caroline S. Brooks, the butter sculptor of the Centennial, is in town, seeking to bust congressmen in the same oleaginous material, and selling photographs of her most celebrated pieces, with a view to obtaining funds to enable her to work on more enduring marble. This lady is a genius in her way, as any one who saw her dreaming 'Iolanthe' can testify. The tools used in moulding that beautiful face, expressing the patient serenity of the blind, were common butter paddles, cedar sticks, broomstraws, and camel's hair pencils. Years ago, she removed with her husband from a large circle of cultivated friends in an eastern city to the then almost wilderness of Arkansas. Hers was the monotonous life of a farmer's wife, and she soon found that her happiness depended upon contriving some plan to relieve the tedious monotony of lonely hours. Being a butter maker, she amused herself in making artistic rolls for market, and gradually the rest followed. Her first attempts were confined to shells, fish, fruits, flowers, etc.
“The tools used in moulding that beautiful face... were common butter paddles, cedar sticks, broomstraws and camel's hair pencils.”
Long before Snohomish became known for its historic architecture, local papers were chronicling the intersection of domestic labor and high art. This story echoes the contemporary 'maker' culture of the Pacific Northwest, where the boundary between craft, trade, and fine art remains fluid and fiercely defended.
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