Fanny Hicks is a visual artist and baker whose work lives at the intersection of fi ne art, craft, and food. Like many artistic children of the 1990s, she grew up dreaming of becoming a Disney artist, spending countless hours drawing the Little Mermaid and imagining a creative life. She went on to study illustration at California College of the Arts in San Francisco, where she honed her technical skills and deepened her love of image-making. After college however, she found the illustration world difficult to enter—particularly while working more than full time to support herself. At the same time, a long-standing passion began to take center stage. Hicks had been decorating cakes since her early teens and regularly competed in her county fair, earning blue ribbons for her work. While attending college, Hicks found work in several bakeries, and when traditional illustration felt increasingly out of reach she redirected her creative energy fully into baking. Though painting took a back seat, her artistic practice never disappeared; it simply shifted mediums. When she did make art it was often paintings of the pastries she had created, reflecting how deeply her time in kitchens continued to inform her visual work. Though she had sculptural training, butter sculpting had never crossed her mind until she was invited to create a giant edible butter cow for Hayden Mills first annual Breadfest. The project became an unexpected and joyful convergence of her artistic worlds. Hicks continues to seek opportunities to create work that blurs the line between food and fine art. This lecture explores an unconventional creative path, from childhood dreams of painting and illustration to professional kitchens and, eventually, sculpting a giant edible cow out of butter. Fanny Hicks shares how her formal art training, years of cake decorating, and experience working as a baker unexpectedly converged in a single project that challenged traditional distinctions between fine art and craft. Through personal storytelling and visual examples, Hicks examines how creative skills migrate across mediums, how making a living can reshape an artistic practice, and why food can be a powerful—and playful—art material. The talk invites audiences to reconsider where art “belongs,” and how curiosity, adaptability, and craftsmanship can lead to surprising creative outcomes—even when butter is involved.