Lego is seriously one of the building blocks of life. We’ve got Carbon, we’ve got Hydrogen, and then we’ve got Lego. It should have it’s own atomic symbol and everything. There isn’t a single person I know who doesn’t have childhood memories of sitting on the living room floor building something out of Lego blocks.
I have a distinct memory of surreptitiously crawling into my little brother’s room and thoughtlessly pillaging his lego stash because I had an Empire State Building on the go in the family room that needed a turret. There was simply no way I was going to go to sleep until that little architectural masterpiece was fully erected. When my Mom caught me she actually snuck in and helped me pull apart his Lego Death Star because she knew I would go apoplectic if I ran out of grey blocks. For those of us who’ve followed the creative/design/geek impulses fostered in our childhood by marathon lego-skyscraper building sessions there is something about using Lego in any adult capacity that is completely, utterly fascinating.
Enter the work of fellow-Lego lover Mike Stimpson. On his Flickr set you can see his toy block genius at work: he takes classic photographs and recreates them with Lego. I appreciate how he doesn’t necessarily take any of the pre-supposed emotional impact of the Lego itself into account when he chooses which photos to recreate. Sure, Lego are always smiling, but that doesn’t mean he only recreates happy photos – like in his reenactment of the iconic “unknown rebel” in Tiannemen Square…
shape+colour 
I love this! I have the Ebbets photo (Lunch atop a skyscraper) in my office. Beautiful blog, btw.
Nobody seems to mention the master of LEGO art, a great polish artist, Zbigniew Libera.
Cheers
They’re quite nice aren’t they.
Legos and Silly Putty 🙂 Don’t forget pressing that flesh-colored glossy compound onto the Sunday comics and stretching the faces into unrecognizable visages resembling Munch’s The Scream…
Am I showing my age?
My kids had enough Legos to rebuild our house. We once saw an exhibit at the Smithsonian where the US Capitol building was recreated (on a smaller scale) using about a gazillion of the little white blocks. Was impressive.
I had seen Mr. Stimpson’s creations before. They’re great. Was not even tempted to wonder how he might better spend his time. Let’s make it an art form! Paint, bronze, glass, clay, charcoal, film… plastic nubby blocks.