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.

Hit Parade

SLUGFEST: Yes, it was a school night. More specifically, a school night before the Big Deal annual state standardized test. But the draw of Safeco Field is just too much to say 'no' to, so off we went.

Thanks to Rick and Rachel, we had awesome seats right behind home plate. That gave us a good view of all the action, from the umpires' pre-game pow-wow ...

to batters in the on-deck circle.

We could also see in the dugout.

And were close enough to home plate to see when the batters disagreed with the umpire's call. Clearly Kyle Seager didn't think that last pitch was a strike. ... 

We had a good enough view to call balls and strikes (not that our opinions mattered to the umpire.)

What a game it was. A slugfest for the Mariners, they scored 13 runs total, 9 more than they needed to beat the As last night. 

Good times!

BINGE WATCH: This afternoon, the kids and I had a semi-mindless manual labor task (attaching fasteners to little art objects), and so to keep our minds occupied while working, we watched a few TED Talks. 

First up was an interesting account that explained the scientific origins for the myth of the Minotaur. No surprise, it appears the myth was an attempt by a long ago civilization to make sense of their world. 

The talk was authored by Matt Kaplan, with animation by Artrake Studio. You can watch it here: https://youtu.be/2aoIs-5zqoI

We also listened to a talk from "The School of Life" series of TED Talks. It was about being a good listener. The talk pointed out that being a good listener isn't something people talk or teach much about, but that it is a skill that can be learned.
https://youtu.be/-BdbiZcNBXg

We also watched four or so episodes of the series "How It's Made" on the Science Channel. We learned about everything from amplifiers to pliers, harmonicas to baseboard heaters, licorice to umbrellas, Ferrari motors to shoe polish. That show is always interesting. 

Close Call

 Source: NASA's Hubble telescope. Mars' Hellas Planitia basin, a 3.5-billion-year-old asteroid crater.

STAR GAZING: We made sure to step outside after dark on May 22 and check out the Red Planet. That day, Mars was in opposition to our Earth, meaning the sun and Mars ended were on precisely opposite ends of Earth. 

Opposition is a good time to take a photo of Mars, because it's fully illuminated by the sun from the perspective of Earth. The Image above was taken by the Hubble space telescope just prior to May 22. 

On May 30, Mars and Earth will be 46.8 million miles away, the closest the two planets have been in 11 years.   https://youtu.be/9qkzDcIeRV0

This video tells viewers more about the opposition.

PINNED IN:  So what does one do to kill time when their kids are doing their civic duty, taking the state standardized tests (as flawed as they are)?

In my case, you sit in your car, hold your breath and Mod Podge cute designs (made from strips of scrapbook paper) onto wooden clothespins. 

The product is supposedly water based, and I had all the windows down, but I think I'm slightly more cross-eyed and brain damaged than I was yesterday. 

But they're cute, right?

The clothespins were part of a bulletin board make over. Here's the before. ...

 And here's the after - after as in covered in burlap, bordered in burlap ribbon, and sporting a couple of jute 'clotheslines' for people to hang things from.

 We also made over a smaller, nearby bulletin board. Info about clubs will be posted here. 

POINT, COUNTERPOINT: I honestly don't remember exactly what the kids were debating here, I just knew I wanted to take a photo of it. 

 The looks on their faces are priceless. 

In the end, we always wind up on the same page. 

PINKY: While out and about today, we stopped to admire these nearly neon pink pretties.