I’ve noticed a lot of interesting creations of brick-built patterns by Katie Walker (eilonwy77). Although we’ve yet to blog her until now, this courtyard creation shows the beautiful application of her designs. Check out the detailed picture of the intricate floor and don’t miss her other designs.
Over the past several weeks I’ve been building gifts to thank various people of my university for the role they’ve played in my undergraduate education at Washington University in St. Louis. The past four years have been an intellectually stimulating journey in my study of arts and sciences and the biology major. At the same time, college saw the boom in my Lego hobby, and I am happy to have employed my experience in building to create these tokens of thanks for the people at my school.
This DNA sculpture park was made for my research mentor, whom I had the privilege of working in his genetics lab for three and a half years. The DNA helix codes for a secret message, which can be solved with some knowledge of molecular biology.
The pirate ship was made for my residential college director whom I’ve known since freshman year. This creation was my foray into building the pirate theme, and it was by a miracle that I discovered the resemblance of white windscreen pieces to sails. The exercise vignette was for my physiology professor, who really cared for her students and made a point to drill it into our young minds to exercise and take care of our bodies. Her quote engraved on the vignette got me back into running this year.
The DNA vignette was also given to my research mentor, and it was for the special occasion on his 60th birthday last week. The spiral effect achieved with Bionicle claws contines to be a hit; the effect of this technique far overshadows its simplicity. The vignette of the green ball is a gift for my behavioral ecology professor, one of the funniest and liveliest faculty at the school. I’ve compared attending his classes to watching stand-up comedy, and I hoped to have captured this liveliness in a video showing the motion and sound effects of the creation.
This depiction of our school’s landmark, Brooking’s Hall, is a gift for my super friendly and resourceful four-year adviser. The build uses the medium dark flesh color from the Prince of Persia sets, and the rarity of the colors reflected the $100+ pricetag on my Bricklink orders. The creation is also my first attempt at building an architectural replica, which I am quite happy for the push to expand my building repertoire.
This fantasy aircraft is for my lab bench mentor, who taught me the skills of DNA manipulation and the etiquette of research. I’ve never built an aircraft like this, but knowing his interest in hobby planes, I couldn’t think of anything better to make.
I presented the last of these gifts yesterday, and I am truly flattered by the responses. Each recipient, with the exception of my research mentor, have voluntarily told me the specific place where the gift will be displayed for a long time to come. In the case of my research mentor, I saw the creation on the windowsill of his office the next day I came to lab. From this, I learned that Lego is truly a special medium.
Today I graduated from college. My next step in life is to apply for medical school, and I’ll be taking a year off to work close to home. Thus, this break from my studies roughly translates into an obscene amount of time to build in the upcoming year.
I’m really not sure what this dog by Chandler Parker would say but I feel it would more pithy than a simple ‘woof!’. Maybe it’s the canine equivalent of the Cheshire Cat.
As we’ve held off blogging for the last week to celebrate the late nnenn’s work I’m sure we all have a backlog of stuff to post. So please excuse the high density of cool LEGO models on your screen.
Dave Shaddix’s March Out Of The Darkness may be a work-in-progress but this photo is certainly ‘done’ enough for me to blog it here. I’m not going to claim this has never been done as I know someone will dig out an old link to something from 1997 but I will say an action posed larger fig diorama like this is a highly unusual concept and one I can fully appreciate when it’s done this well. Perhaps Dave would like to provide us with the music.
For our seventh installment of weekly interviews, Keith Goldman goes urban. Take it away, Keith!
If you have a Flickr account, and a decent list of contacts then your photo stream has probably been tagged by this week’s builder, Cole Blaq. Legally known as Aran Jitsukawa-Hudson (which is an awesome name and far more interesting than yours or mine), Cole has done what is so difficult to do in our flabby sea of Mannkinder; achieve a truly unique style.
I sat down with Aran on a cold November night, thirty feet over the Autobahn on the backside of a billboard for BMW. We drank whiskey from the bottle and talked about Fritz Lange, the evils of Teflon and the enduring comedic value of the Maginot Line. We also talked about LEGO.
Keith Goldman: Talk to me about bombing, burning and “getting up” with bricks. How did you develop your signature graffiti style, and what techniques serve as its core?
Cole Blaq: The ride’s quite a while ago, it dropped hard and after that all was left to burn. Getting up, spreading your name and development still continues. The material has changed but the style is still the integral element of self-expression. The context of public space is amiss, but yet it refers and in the proper spotlight this discussion definitely will be continued.
Since I restarted building with bricks in early 2008 I’ve had a vision of creating graffiti styles – it came naturally according to my previous years of expression. My signature was developed long before my brickish time. Now it just reappears into the bricks. Often the style has a certain character next to my signature that originates from the brick matrix and the character of the parts used.
The development with the bricks started with simple drafts to see with what techniques one can approach style-lettering. It started as a simple challenge over at the Urban Culture and Bricks group last May and within a month fully articulated and developed styles were achieved, wherein many of those previous draft builds melted together.
I have developed two basic techniques, one is based on straight slopes and the other one is based on wedge plates. The second technique includes hinges and hinges and hinges in order to break and angle the letters at the right places. With those parts I can shape the letters two dimensionally and in the next step I extend the letters into third space — considering different possibilities. That’s where it becomes really tricky and interesting. I am actually working on another founding structure based upon Technic parts. All these techniques can be modified and intermixed and limitless ways of creating styles are possible – it’s all about experimenting and trial and error.
KG: You are an art history student; does that influence your building? I once used this diorama for an Egyptian history course. Have you ever used the brick for an assignment?
CB: Art history is all about theory, not practice, which is my grande critique of the art historian education: Most students miss empathy for the work, its material and inner pictorial issues. As I have a continuous creative output I see myself in the same line, except I am not offishal, Mr. Offisha. An artistic approach is quite different than model building. Models are nice to build and the experience from that flows into my free works.
It is another issue to create something new, something not based upon a real life or a concept draft. Spaceship designs for example reach within these realms, but are too bound to our standardized perception of what a spaceship must contain.
Bricks have their value; they lay out a foundation and a certain pattern which enables certain things, predominated directions and characteristics.
At the same time the pattern and the material itself limits a free artistic expression. These days I often come to the limits of the bricks being true to my expression. Another problem is the core of a build. After creating a ground structure and building upon it, it is very often impossible to reach back to the core and tweak the structure, if one wants to change things later…
But that’s a topic I continue to ponder: how to approach that part practically and theoretically (due to my art historian studies).
No assignments up to now, but I am working on it and will share my success or cover my face in shame if I fail.
KG: Another fan of LEGO, Jon Palmer turned me on to Banksy. We have debated if it would be possible to do something “Banksy”-like with the medium of LEGO, what do you say?
CB: Yay, the Banksy question!
OK, what is Banksy-like? Banksy set a certain latter in subversive political humor without taking a direct position. Also most people are familiar with the stencil style he applies. If you are talking about his humor, it is possible to depict that kind in any medium. If you’re talking about stencils, its techniques are similar to those used for a silhouette / cut-out principle. Doing brick mosaics with bricksaic and some pre-editing in Photoshop will produce a similar effect. The theme / images with which Banksy plays, the interlocking stencil technique, are somehow copy-able. The biggest issue you’ll encounter is that of public space as the integral canvas / background which will be impossible to surrogate. Even his public space works being exhibited inside the white cube (classical museums and art galleries) raise the same problems. His work relating to the art business is different as it is an examination and debate within that context and also only works inside the gallery.
There are a few people who have managed to bring the brick message to the streets in their very own way. Two of them are Jan Vormann from St. Petersburg and ame72 from the UK.
Seeing Banksy’s kind of black and subversive humor in bricks would be great, but you’ll have to be prepared to question all existing rules and cut your precious little bricks until they bleed.
More of Keith’s interview with Cole after the jump: Continue reading
I’m not sure how long it’s been there, but this mosaic at Lego’s headquarters in Billund is made out of minifigs, yes, minifigs. You can see it in the background of a humorous video of the company, made to solace those who have suffered injuries from stepping on Lego bricks. Photo by Michale Sevy.
We’re nearing the end of Black History Month here in the US and Canada. In the American South, prior to the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, religion played a key role in justifying the centuries-long exploitation of men, women, and children of African descent.
In a new Epistles section of The Brick Testament, the Rev. Brendan Powell Smith has some examples of the New Testament passages that slave-owners used to rationalize treating another human being as property.
Janey “Red Brick” Gunning shows support for Team Canada with her sculpture depicting the logo of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games:
I’m always amazed by the endless creativity that happens with Lego. Here, Chris Doyle builds a lenticular image, more precisely with cheese slopes. Check out the effect in the video below.
Nathan Sawaya has created a gorgeous tribute to Waldo H. Hunt, the King of Pop-Up Books. By the way, this is also Nathan’s first castle.
Thanks to Bruce for pointing this out on Classic-Castle.
Sean Kenney was recently featured in a 30 minute documentary aired on Japan’s national public broadcasting organization, NHK. Click on the image below for the link to the video, where you can see Sean’s LEGO studio, his Times Square model, and watch him build his largest creation: a life-sized polar bear!
Cole Blaq built his name and lit it on fire! Without using light sources inside the sculpture, Cole used a gradient of bricks from the white core to the red rims and an overhead lamp to cast the glow. The effect amazingly realistic!
