LEGO Artist Sawaya Speaks to Suite101.com
Sculptor Talks About His Beginnings in Art and His Creations
May 25, 2009
When did you begin working with LEGO bricks as an artist?
I have sculpted with many different media, but it was about nine years ago that I challenged myself to create a large scale sculpture using only this toy from my childhood: LEGO bricks. It got a good response and I soon put together a few more pieces. I posted photos of my works on my website...and soon thereafter I was getting commissions from all over the world.
At the time I was reading a book of Tom Friedman's art. Among other things, Friedman uses non-traditional media to create sculptures. I was inspired and I realized then that LEGO art was a viable option....I hope kids use my book The Art of the Brick: The Pictorial, which is a collection of my works from the past few years, to become inspired to be their own artists..
Did you go to art school?
I studied art in school, but in the end I majored in politics and went on to law school. Like so many folks coming out of college, I did what society expected of me: go become a professional. Unfortunately, I didn't trust my skills as an artist to make a viable living. That would change.
When you start a piece, how do you approach it? Do you do a sketch? A model in clay?
I have an art studio in New York City that has over 1.5 million LEGO elements. I spend most of my days there creating sculptures.
Once I figure out what I am going to build, I then try and picture in my head what the finished piece is going to look like. This may involve me doing research for awhile to get ideas as to how something looks exactly. For example, when I recently built a large bear, I spent a lot of time online looking at pictures of bears to get a feel for what details are needed to make up a bear.
At this point in my career, I see the world in little rectangles. Sometimes I catch myself staring at a building or even a person and breaking down how it would look made out of LEGO.
The next step in the creative process involves skietching out my ideas. I generally draw out my thoughts on paper, just to make sure the idea is viable. I also sketch on something called "brickpaper," which is like graph paper but with rectangles the exact saize as bricks. In fact, I now have pads of brickpaper available on my webside. Eventually, I start buiilding. The good thing about working with LEGO is that if I don't like how something looks after I build it, I can just take it apart and build it again differently.
Talk about the Rebirth of New Orleans
After the Katrina devastation, I was commissioned to build a permanent installation for the New Orleans Public Library. I worked on the design for about two weeks before picking up the first brick. I then spent about four weeks building the sculpture, after which it took about two days to install it in the library.
My initial idea involved a giant hand. The hand was always meant to protect the city. I wanted to shield the city with the hand at first, but then realized that instead of shielding the city, it really needed to be rebuilding the city. As the idea developed, the hand became the focal point of the rebirth of the city.
As the project took form,I received drawings from children all over the country with their impressions of what was important for the rebuilding of New Orleans. Through the thousands of pictures, I definitely noticed that no matter where they were from, all kids had very similar ideas about what was important for a city. It would need a fire station, a hospital, schools and a park.
The kids' drawings were drawn in different styles and a plethora of colors, but I saw these themes repeated again and again. Other common themes included hotels, houses and libraries. It was quickly clear to me that these drawings would be the basis of the sculpture. I wanted to incorporate the range of ideas from the children and soon began sculpting almost literal interpretations of the drawings. For example, one girl had drawn a pink hospital. Now you might be hard pressed to find a bright pink hospital in any real city, but I decided that using the pink hospital would capture the spiritt of these children's ideas.
At the installation, I was greeted by a large group of children in first, second and third grades who had all been affected by Hurricane Katrina. It was special to hear their stories and see the awe in their eyes when the sculpture was revealed.
Source:
- Sawaya, Nathan. E-mail Interview by Linda N. Riggins. 3 May 2009.
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