nathan sawaya

nathan sawaya

Nathan Sawaya is a New Yorkbased artist who creates aweinspiring art from some of the most unlikely things. His recent global museum exhibitions feature largescale sculptures using only toy building blocks. LEGO bricks to be exact. As a full-time independent artist, Sawaya accepts commission

requests and shows his art in galleries in New York, Miami and Maui. Hes available to design and build custom creations for private collectors, events, photo shoots and conventions. In addition, he is occasionally available for speaking requests and is the author of two bestselling books. These books include The Art of Nathan Sawaya and The Art of the BrickThe Pictorial. Sawaya was the rst artist to ever take LEGOs into the art world. His unique sculptures and touring exhibition, The Art of the Brick, continues to inspire creativity as well as break attendance records around the globe. Born in Colville, Washington and raised in Veneta, Oregon, Sawayas childhood dreams were always fun. He drew cartoons, wrote stories, perfected magic
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bio

tricks and also played with LEGOs.

forms and artists. Imagine Frank Lloyd Wright crossed with Ray Harryhausen, or Auguste Rodin crossed with Shigeru Miyamoto and you start to get a sense of where Sawaya is coming from. Sawayas art form takes shape primarily in 3dimensional sculptures and oversized portraits. He continuously creates art daily while accepting commission work from around the world. crafted and is both beautiful and playful. Sawayas ability to transform LEGO bricks into something new, his devotion to scale and color perfection, the way he conceptualizes the action of the subject matter enables him to elevate an ordinary toy into the status of ne art. According to journalist Scott Jones, Sawaya earned a law degree from New York University and proceeded to practice law at the New York rm Winston & Strawn. He left his career as an attorney in 2004 after he rediscovered LEGOs as a medium rather than simply a toy. Today, Sawaya has more than 2.5 million colored bricks in his New York and Los Angeles art studios. His work is obsessively and painstakingly Sawaya is a surrealist mashup of

graphy

the

art of the brick

The Art of the Brick museum show tours North America, Asia and Australia. This exhibition is the rst major museum exhibition to focus exclusively on the use of the popular toy, LEGO bricks, as an art medium and artist Nathan Sawaya has taken it to new heights. The New Yorkbased artist has multiple unique exhibitions created solely from standard LEGO bricks with several new sculptures created specically for

each exhibition. Each show has countless, colorful LEGO pieces, which Sawaya has transformed into whimsical and awe inspiring creations. Sawayas ability to transform this common toy into something meaningful, his devotion to spatial perfection and the way he conceptualizes action, enables him to elevate what almost every child has played with into the status of contemporary art.

These works are very personal to me, since they reect my growth as an artist as I strove to discover my creative identity, said Sawaya. The museum exhibition is accessible because it engages the child in all of us while simultaneously illuminating sophisticated and complex concepts. Everyone can relate to the medium since it is a toy that many children have at home. But my goal with this exhibition when it rst debuted in 2007, was to elevate this simple plaything to a place it has never been before.
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disintegration
35" x 32" x 6"

Friends huddle together to keep from being buffed by the winds. Spiritual partners want to know where the winds come from.
Nathan Sawaya

Art of the Brick is pretty much blowing our minds...

Cond Nast Traveler
green
70" x 27" x 15"

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Amazing Lifelike LEGO Masterpieces

Good Morning America
mask (left) detail (above)
29" x 71" x 24"

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skulls

34" x 24" x 3"

A breathtaking exhibition... thoughtprovoking, visceral, playful and inspired.

TimeOut New York Kids

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Dont Miss!
New York Post
peace by piece (right) detail (below) 30" x 30" x 4"

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despair

32" x 28" x 17"

Some of my other ideas really come from personal journeys, personal emotions, and just trying to express something new out of LEGO!
Nathan Sawaya
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untitled

7" x 21" x 6"

Nathan Sawayas Lego Creations Are Awesome

The Huffington Post

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Anything But Childs Play

The Wall Street Journal
yellow
35" x 13" x 28"

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stairway (left) detail (right) 38" x 40" x 15"

Nathan Sawaya uses 1.5 million Legos to build wonders!

Daily News

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the courage within

60" x 18" x 11"

Opening oneself up to the world is not an easy thing to do.

Nathan Sawaya

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untitled

13" x 23" x 13"

He turns the tiny, plastic bricks into works of art!

Fox 5 News

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q & a
What is your earliest experience discovering Lego and when did your interest in becoming a lego artist start? I had LEGO bricks growing up. When I was about ten years old, I asked my parents if I could get a pet dog, and when they did not get one for me, I created a lifesize dog for myself out of LEGO bricks. It was an early turning point in my art career. As an adult, I created artwork using more traditional media such as clay and wire. I had also done a series of sculptures out of candy. A few years ago I thought about his toy from my childhood and challenged myself to create a large scale sculpture using just LEGO bricks. It was well received got a strong reaction from friends and family. I continued working with bricks as a medium, and it has led to my current career as the brick artist. How was your learning experience when you rst started and how have you evolved from then and now? One important part was learning how to glue bricks together. I had found that although the bricks snap together just ne, I needed to glue them together in order for the sculptures to be shipped and arrive in one piece. Museums get grumpy when they open up a crate and just ne a pile of loose LEGO bricks (some assembly required). I had to gure out how to use glue without taking away too much from the look of the bricks. It took a while to master gluing the sculptures together. Besides the beauty and creativity surrounding Lego, what do you think is the essence of Lego? Possibilities. There are many reasons why I use LEGO, but the foremost reason is that LEGO bricks let me create anything I can imagine. I wanted to elevate this simple childhood toy to a place it has never been before: into the ne art galleries and museums. I appreciate the cleanliness of the LEGO brick. The right angles. The distinct lines. As so often in life, it is a matter of perspective. Up close, the shape of the brick is distinctive.But from a distance, those right angles and distinct lines change to curves. That is what drew me to the brick.

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Your works are very detail orientated. What is the creation process like and what is the average time you spend on a project? Essentially there is a similar process for each sculpture. It starts with inspiration and an idea. Inspiration comes from everywhere. Many of my works center on the phenomena of how everyday life, people and raw emotion are intertwined. Often my art is a reenactment of my personal feelings.I am inspired by my own experiences, emotions and the journeys I am taking. I also try and express my emotions through my art. Once I am inspired I draw out my idea. I am always carrying my sketch pad so that I can draw out my ideas as they come to me. Before I start building, I try and plan out as much as possible. I want to envision in my mind what the nished sculpture will look like before I put down that rst brick. As I start building, I actually glue the bricks together as I go. This involves painting a little bit of glue on each and every brick. If I make a mistake, well, Im good with a hammer and chisel. Once the sculpture looks the way I had envisioned it, I know that Im done. The timing of this process is different for every sculpture. A typical lifesize human gure can take up to 23 weeks to create. What has been your most challenging project so far? Every project has its own challenges. Any time I am doing a human form, I struggle with making it look correct. It can be challenging to use these small rectangular bricks to form the curves of a human body. It is a step by step process to make sure the sculpture looks right. One of the most challenging sculptures was a human form sculpture titled Pushing Against. The gure needed to stretch over 8 feet tall so that when sitting on the oor its hands were pressed against the ceiling. One of my more ambitious projects was creating an entire billboard that hung in Hollywood, California. It measured over ftythree feet long and fteen feet high. I used over 500,000 individual LEGO pieces to make it. One of my biggest sculptures is a skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex. It measures over 20 feet long and took me an entire summer to build. It is currently on tour in Australia as part of my exhibition, The Art of the Brick. What is the most important factor to you when working on a project? Color. It is important to use the right color.

with...

nathan
What do you try to communicate through your art? I want to captivate people for as long as I can keep their attention. Certain works may have different messages. The message of my artwork depends on the particular piece. Each piece has a different story. For instance my sculpture,The Courage Within, is about the transitions one can go through in life. Specically, the metamorphosis I went through in my transitions from attorney to artist.The fact that the sculpture is built out of a construction toy and the store behind the sculpture is about re-building oneself is additive to the interpretation. What else are you passionate about besides Lego art? Cooking. I like to cook. If I wasnt an artist, I would probably be a chef. Favorite spot in New York? Clearly, my art studio. What is the perfect working mode like when working on a project? I go into a trancelike state when I am working. I dont know if it is perfect, or even healthy, but so far it works for me for making art. In your opinion, how will you dene creativity? It is all creativity. Everything is creativity. You can nd it with almost very action. What do you like most about what you do? Watching people viewing my artwork for the rst time. I enjoy seeing peoples reactions to artwork created from something with which they are familiar.Everyone can relate to it since it is a toy that many children have at home.

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f e a t u r e d

e x h i b i t i o n s

MASS MoCA Columbus Museum of Art New York Public Library Spot Gallery Moss Gallery Avant Gallery Sullivan Goss Gallery Nassau Country Museum of Art DAmour Museum of Fine Arts Art Museum of South Texas Flinn Gallery Kimball Art Museum American Swedish Museum Time Warner Center Mesa Contemporary Arts Center Central Park New Orleans Public Library The Art & Culture Center Mulvane Art Museum Lancaster Museum of Art

North Adams, MA Columbus, OH New York, NY Paris, FR New York, NY Miami, FL Santa Barbara, CA Roslyn Harbor, NY Springeld, MA Corpus Christi, TX Greenwich, CT Park City, UT Philadelphia, PA New York, NY Mesa, AZ New York, NY New Orleans, LA Hollywood, FL Topeka, KS Lancaster, PA

colo phon
This book was designed by N i c o l e Tu i t e a n d p r i n t e d d i g i tially coated in Philadelphia Silk 80# on text McCoy paper and coated McCoy Silk 1 0 0 # c o v e r p a p e r. T h e t y p e faces used include Memphis LT S t d a n d H e l v e t i c a i n v a r i ous type styles and sizes.

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