HANDMADE
A World of Brick
Growing up in Veneta, Ore., Nathan Sawaya
constructed a 36-square-foot city behind his
parents’ living room couch.
The primary-colored metropolis, painstakingly
pieced together one durable plastic brick at a time,
thrived for more than a decade. There were schools,
restaurants, an airport and hotel — even an amusement park. But Sawaya wasn’t prepping for a future
in Lilliputian design. He was laying the foundation
for a career in Lego art.
In 2004, Sawaya left his job as a corporate lawyer
to play with Legos professionally. “One day my site
got so many hits that it crashed,” he says. “That’s
when I realized I had a viable business.”
More than 1. 5 million Lego bricks are stashed in
clear bins and shelved according to color — like
“walking into a rainbow” — at Sawaya’s New York
City art studio, where the 35-year-old spends much
of his time brainstorming and building.
Though he doesn’t keep count, he estimates his
average-sized sculptures (Sawaya’s creations range
in size from a two-brick tree to a 20-foot-long T. rex
skeleton) use anywhere from 20,000 to 80,000
Lego bricks.
Sawaya’s first “sale,” a self-designed Barbie-sized
Lego car bartered for Halloween candy, paved the
way for dozens more Lego sculptures, logos, and
portraits, including a life-sized replica of satirist
Stephen Colbert, an anatomically correct human
heart, a 7-foot-long Brooklyn Bridge, and what is
likely his most popular piece, a male figure tearing
his chest open with Lego bricks spilling out, aptly
named Yellow.
“I have received thousands of emails about this
piece over the years,” he says.
According to Sawaya, there’s definitely one
advantage to using Lego as a medium: “If I don’t like
how something looks after I built it, I can just take it
apart and build it again differently.”
—Laura Kiniry
>> Sawaya’s studio: brickartist.com
Photograph by brickartist.com
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