Lego

I wrote about lego a little on the rainbow photoshoot post, how I loved playing with it as a kid and adored Olafur Eliasson's Cubic Structural Evolution Project using a tonne of white lego and the imagination of the public.

Lego in it's early basic structure is such a simple building block that the possibilities are endless.  The company began making wooden toys in 1932 and when they first started making plastic ones it was at a time when plastic was not well received.   Time moved on and in 1960 they devoted to plastic following a warehouse fire.  The range grew from the basic pieces and colours to include a whole range of pieces that enabled the most complicated things to be produced, including mechanical models.

The most impressive example of using lego to create a working model was the time Lego decided to create a working Bugatti Chiron.  The car is beautiful.  It does not have a smooth surface for a fancy paintjob, instead the lego creates a fascinating structure full of different patterns.  It did drive too!

Of course, if people can make a car then they can make amazing models.  There are Legoland theme parks in quite a few countries now and each of them have lots of amazing lego models.  Lego employs builders to design and make these structures.  They include recreations of landmarks, landscapes and figures from films.  Dan McCormack has made models of his favourite Pokémon characters that are great!  Patrick Biggs makes incredible figures that are just beyond...

Of course there are some builders who take it way beyond...  Nathan Sawaya makes sculptures that go beyond and they are incredible.  My favourite are those that focus on the human figure in a way that really expresses an emotion or state.  A yellow man ripping open his body so yellow bricks spill out.  A grey downtrodden man trying to hold up a giant pencil (Pencil Pusher).  A grey man in a grey suit with a red person trying to escape from inside them. A red man trying to hold his head together as a crack travels downwards.  They are not his only artworks but they really touch something in me emotionally.

Nathan Sawaya took it a step further though when he teamed up with Dean West to produce In Pieces.  Dean is a photographer and the exhibition is centred around some beautiful photographic images.  As you look closer, you realise that one or two elements of the picture are actually created from lego.  In some of the pictures I had to really look to spot the element...

There are a lot of photographers who work with lego and some of my favourites use minifigures. Joe Shymanski is a photographer with more conventional subjects for his day job but he started taking photographs of minifigures as a hobby.  Many of his pictures include storm troopers and I really love these.  Two stormtroopers making angels amongst hundred and thousands (or sprinkles if you don't live in the UK).  Stormtroopers offering free hugs.  A stormtrooper giving flowers to their loved one who has taken her helmet off.  These are some of my favourite...  (Joe has a website but it seemed to be down so I have not included a link)

Others photograph minifigures too. Samsofy has a bunch of posts on Bored Panda and they contain great photography of minifigure adventures. I think the post of rock stars is my favourite!  This couple photograph two minifigures that they created to represent them in various locations as they travel the world.  They have a lovely Instagram page that documents their lives with lego.  I love the way it documents their family too as you look back...  Their photos started off as the two of them, then there was a baby, who is no longer a baby.  It's really lovely.

Actually that was something I did one Christmas for some of my family members.  You can buy the different pieces of minifigures individually to make your own and then equip them with all sorts of objects.  One of my favourites was a model of my niece's boyfriend but there was a biohazard container, which if he drank it, turned him into a zombie...  There were zombie parts to switch out to turn him in to a zombie minifigure and a blue healing canister he could use to turn back into a human.  I even got him a little newspaper with zombie headlines.

Lego also produce minifigure sets which are great to collect.  I collected the most recent Harry Potter set and I have the figures sat in an old print type case on my landing wall.  I also have some Dr Who minifigures which are not lego but are very cool.  People make great displays using minifigures.

People also use lego to create mosaics.  Some of them are very graphical, for instance recreations of Mondrian paintings look amazing in lego.  Others are pixelated versions of art classics.  Of course pixelated characters like those from Minecraft really suit lego mosaics...  Some of the most astounding are creations of album covers like Nirvana's Nevermind and the Beatles Abbey Road (although these are digitally created).

Looking like mosaics, the street art of Jan Vormann is an unexpected delight.  He travels the world fixing crumbling masonry with an infill of brightly coloured lego bricks as part of a project called Dispatchwork.

James May created a Lego House for his series Toy Stories and the programme is still available on youtube.  It's a great programme with plenty of humour.  The house looked incredible but you would not want to live in it and the furniture didn't work so well.  Unfortunately the house was taken down as it could not be transported.

There is furniture inspired by lego though...  and storage boxes, lunch boxes, jewellery, cushions and a lot more...

There is a nostalgia to lego, a geeky nerdy charm.  It has become iconic.