Then along came an incredible LEGO artist, Ekow Nimako

As an avid builder and a contributor for The Brothers Brick, I have seen a lot of LEGO creations. I mean A LOT of LEGO creations. To put this in perspective as to what it is like to be an adult LEGO builder, I have a LEGO room in my home — most of us do, some more elaborate than others. Whether it be a corner of the laundry room, a repurposed bedroom, or an elaborate add-on suite built for this reason, we all have a dedicated space to build LEGO. A perusal of my phone contacts reveals that the vast majority of my friends are LEGO friends. We eat, sleep and breath this stuff daily. By now I’ve written a fair number of articles and am confident that I can at least amuse if not inspire or enlighten our readers. With all this in mind, you’d think there would be no one to baffle me and put me at a loss for words. But then along came Ekow Nimako.

This is the first article, in my history with TBB anyway, that needed encouragement from some of the other contributors and editors. I generally don’t need encouragement to run my mouth…or run my fingers over the keys, as it were, to clack out witticisms and veiled truths. Yet here I am, despite having an advanced art degree and being an avid wordsmith (both implies the license and experience to weave a tapestry of colorful prose) — here I am staring at a blinking cursor at a loss to convey the brevity to match a profound write-up this piece rightfully deserves.

Perhaps the words will come to me later, but what I can state with confidence for now are facts gleaned from Ekow’s Instagram profile. This piece is called “Flower Girl” and is made from over 25,000 black LEGO bricks. She stands four feet tall and has been an evolutionary work for about five years now. She is part of an installation called “To Feed the Village the Young Must Grow” and will be premiered at this year’s Berlin Art Week in September as part of the multi-international artist public exhibit called Robots and Relics. Then in October this sculpture will travel to the UK to join the touring exhibit Brick by Brick.

Here is a closeup of “Flower Girl” and a photo showing the artist working on her, as well as a couple more thrown in for good measure.

A detailed perusal of Ekow’s other photos proves this is not his only LEGO labor of love. He has constructed other sculptures of varying size, some of figures, some of animals, not all exclusively in black brick but predominantly so.

Be sure to check out his website here for more art, videos and insight into his reasons for building in black. You can also find Ekow’s book, Beasts from Bricks, on Amazon.

After giving it some sincere thought and thoroughly checking out his website, I find that despite my art degree and my experience as an artist, LEGO builder, and writer, I can still only come up with one word to convey how I feel about “Flower Girl” and Ekow’s work in general. Spellbound.

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