(See this game for reference.) As a kid, artist Nathan Sawaya made a life-size Boxer out of Lego bricks when his parents wouldn't get him a dog. Now, he's working with Lady Gaga and creating golden statues for certain awards shows. But it took many years before he turned an obsession into a career. Nathan Sawaya: Another Brick In The Wall After college, Sawaya didn't have much faith in his art, so he attended law school and became a corporate lawyer. The creative bug continued to itch, however, as Sawaya would draw, write and paint after work. One day, he rediscovered his childhood collection of the whimsical bricks and used them to construct massive, intricate sculptures expressing a range of emotions, like fear and joy. He created a website featuring pictures of his Lego art, and quickly developed a following. The day his website crashed from too many hits, Sawaya left the corporate world to pursue his art full time. Sawaya left the confines of his art studio and joined Ask Me Another host Ophira Eisenberg to chat about how he assembles his larger-than-life creations.
Each project begins with drawing a sketch, followed by clicking together and gluing each individual brick together. If he makes a mistake, a hammer and chisel will do the trick. The largest thing he's ever created, Sawaya said, was "a Tyrannosaurus Rex skeleton that measures over 20 feet long. I used over 80,000 bricks, because that's what gets the girls ... [building it] took me an entire summer." For his exhibit "The Art of the Brick," Sawaya created astounding replicas of famous paintings and statues by artists like Vincent Van Gogh and Marcel Duchamp. So in an Ask Me Another Challenge, we quizzed him on how much he knows about those original masterpieces, like "The Starry Night" and "The Fountain." Plus, Sawaya bestowed upon the episode's grand winner a special prize: Hugman, a 15-inch Lego sculpture that is Sawaya's version of "street art." How long does it take Nathan Sawaya to assemble a Hugman? Interview Highlights On his massive Lego collection I have about 4 million Lego bricks.
And then a few million in storage in case something comes up. I still pay for them. I buy my bricks just like everyone else. It's by far my biggest capital expense. On why he doesn't alter Lego bricks I aim confined to the Lego palette. I don't paint the bricks. I stick with what Lego has made. And the idea behind that is I do want to hopefully inspire kids to go home and create on their own. And if I do, I want them to be able to buy those very same bricks I use. It's an interesting challenge, but it's part of being a Lego artist. On his street art project I'm based here in New York City. I see a lot of street art. I wanted to have my own version of street art. What could I do? It's not real easy to paint with Lego bricks, so I came up with my own little concept. I call him Hugman. A little figure — he's 15 inches tall, he hugs things like park benches, sign posts. I just leave him around the city. It's a good hour before he disappears. This episode originally aired on March 20, 2014.
The Lego Batman Movie hits theaters in less than a month’s time, and to help ramp up the film’s marketing blitz, Lego teamed up with Chevrolet to build a life-sized version of the Dark Knight’s latest Batmobile out of mostly plastic bricks—some 344,187 of them to be exact. The Lego Batmobile, which measures in at 17 feet long, nine feet wide, and almost seven feet tall, actually has an internal frame made of square aluminum tubing to ensure it doesn’t collapse under its own weight. All of those plastic bricks weighs just shy of 1,700 pounds. (Each wheel on its own weighs close to 100 pounds.) We never pegged Batman as a superhero who would let himself get caught up in corporate synergy, but apparently Bruce Wayne was more than eager to team up with Chevrolet to help with the 222-hour build required to bring this version of the Batmobile to life. It’s incredibly detailed, and as much a work of art as it is yet another advertisement for Lego’s next movie. But the toymaker is missing a big opportunity by not turning this into an official set that fans can buy.
It might be prohibitively expensive and way too big to fit on the shelf at Toys ‘R’ Us, but imagine the satisfaction of finally completing a set like this all by yourself, even if it takes years.[The Lego Batman Movie via Chevrolet] Patience, Fortitude and a Whole Lot of Legos Nathan Sawaya did Patience first, just as the other guy did. You know, Edward Clark Potter, the sculptor who did the lions in front of the New York Public Library, on Fifth Avenue at 42nd Street. Mr. Sawaya is the artist commissioned to make copies of the lions, which have been lionized — sorry, we typed that word without thinking and groaned as loudly as you did — ever since they took their places 100 years ago. The anniversary of their dedication is Monday. He has copied other landmarks, including the Statue of Liberty, the Brooklyn Bridge, the Washington Monument and the United States Capitol. He has also done a giant BlackBerry smartphone and a 77-inch-tall sculpture called “Red-Headed Man” that looks like Conan O’Brien.
Mr. Sawaya’s medium is Lego blocks. “Some artists use paint, others use bronze,” he said by way of explanation. He said he had more than 1.5 million Lego “bricks” in his studio on Lexington Avenue and “another few million” in a storage center outside the city, “just in case.” The lions reduced Mr. Sawaya’s inventory by 60,000. The color is “just a standard gray,” he said. “This was a special challenge,” he said. “The lions are so iconic. Everyone who lives in the city has walked past those lions at some point, so there’s this challenge of doing them justice. “If I’m creating a free-form piece of art, I can make it look like anything I want and nobody will say it’s wrong. But here, I have to make sure it looks right. There was definitely some pressure there.” The lions are Patience on the downtown side of the library’s front steps and Fortitude on the uptown side. The library says Potter made Patience first, in clay. Then he created Fortitude.