Brick by Brick

SNEAK PREVIEW: Lucky Pacific Science Center members that we are, we had a chance to preview "The Art of the Brick" today. 

Named one of CNN’s Top Ten “Global Must-See Exhibitions,” The Art of the Brick" is a critically acclaimed collection made exclusively from one of the most recognizable toys in the world, the LEGO® brick.

It featured the creations of artist Nathan Sawaya. He's pictured below, in a video we watched while in one of the two interior holding tanks before one's let in the exhibit.

 The first antechamber has Sawaya's take on super famous classics, like Starry Night ...

 and The Great Wave off Kanagawa.

It was interesting in this section looking at the use of LEGO bricks on the flat/stacked vertically as opposed to ones where the nubs stuck out toward you (as in Starry Night).

I had CJ pose with Mona Lisa for scale. (Scale of Mona Lisa, not CJ, that is.) Most of the pieces in this first antechamber were done on a 1:1 scale.

I loved Rembrandt (below). It will shock you to know that the masses of two year olds brought to the art show by their parents who apparently thought it was a WORLD OF PLAYING WITH LEGO THINGS weren't as entranced by Rembrandt, or the Mona Lisa or any of it.

Don't get me wrong, I also like two-year olds. I just felt bad for all the pre- and primary schoolers who came to the LEGO exhibit thinking it was going to be a place to play with LEGO bricks. It was so very much not that. It was an art exhibit with artifacts made from LEGO bricks.

However, that fact didn't stop parents from letting their toddlers run unsupervised and climb all over the exhibits when we were there opening day. 

In one of the holding tanks pre exhibit, we were all specifically told to stay an arm's length away from all of the sculptures.

I can't tell you how many little people I saw literally climbing over the DO NOT TOUCH signs. 

I don't mean to sound like an old curmudgeon, but it was disturbing. 

 Despite the distractions young and old, we soldiered on.

 My personal favorite sculpture was a Moai scultpure, a/k/a an Easter Island head!

 It was masterfully crafted!

 Queen Nefertiti was also looking splendid.

Sawaya doesn't just do his own riffs on others' works. He is an artist in his own right. Here's a sculpture where the artist loses his own hands. Sawaya said it's his worst fear.

There was a cool gallery featuring photos were just a couple of elements were replaced with LEGO sculptures. 

 The sculpture below, "Be Different" was made specifically for the PacSci show! 

Below is the artist's self portrait. It was about 5-feet high. That's a lot of LEGO bricks!

Here's what the kids had to say about their sneak preview of the big show. Here's Annabelle's take. ... 

“Art of the Brick” is an exhibit at the Pacific Science Center about sculptures made out of LEGO bricks made by artist Nathan Sawaya. Nathan has been making these sculptures for a long time, and a surprising amount of them were on display at the exhibit. Most of the models (and some LEGO “paintings”) are actually 1:1 scale to their inspiration!
 The sculptures are crazy detailed, and I only saw one sloped LEGO brick in the whole exhibition! The sculptures were really awesome and even lifelike. My favorite was the Maoi statue. It was exactly to scale, but made entirely of LEGO bricks! Even though they are held together with super glue, the statues are very fragile, so you aren’t supposed to come within an arm’s length of them. But many little kids apparently thought the exhibit was “World of LEGOs” because they were super close to breaking every sculpture. But nonetheless, the exhibit was really cool and I thought his original sculptures were some of the coolest. I would recommend it on a day when it’s not very busy so you don’t have a heart attack from watching 3-year-olds almost destroy millions of dollars of work.

And here's what CJ had to say ...

"The Art of the Brick" is an exhibit at the Pacific Science Center featuring several pieces of artwork made by Nathan Sawaya, an artist who primarily works with the medium of LEGO bricks. According to the Pacific Science Center's website, "The Art of the Brick" was named one of CNN’s Top Ten “Global Must-See Exhibitions.” According to Nathan's website, previously a NYC corporate lawyer, Sawaya is the first artist to ever take LEGO into the art world and is the author of two best selling books. His unique exhibition is the first of its kind to focus exclusively on LEGO as an art medium and has broken attendance records around the globe. The creations, constructed from countless individual LEGO pieces, were built from standard bricks beginning as early as 2002.

At the exhibit, there were several pieces of art, both variations of iconic paintings rebuilt with LEGO bricks, along with original pieces made by Nathan. For an example of a LEGO variation of an earlier painting, Nathan built a 1:1 replica of the Mona Lisa using 4,573 bricks. Nathan said that the Mona Lisa was "likely the most famous painting in Western art," and explained some of the process of making the LEGO Mona Lisa. Apparently, Nathan decided to highly pixelate the brick replica of the painting, rather than trying to capture the details by using very small pieces. According to Nathan, people might have difficulty making out a blurred picture of his recreation from a blurred recreation of the real deal (I doubt that claim).

However, there were less-than impressive parts of our tour. (Hint: It had little to do with the actual art pieces.) There were several small children at the exhibit, frequently breaking the rules and being disruptive to other people's experiences. At the beginning of the tour, one of the employees set a rule that the closest you could get to one piece of art was outside of your arm's length; Unfortunately, many of the kids that were there desperately wanted to assemble and disassemble the sculptures. My mom's guess was that parents mistook the exhibit for a "Let's play with LEGO!" exhibit or something similar to that.