CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- Nathan Sawaya said his parents always encouraged creativity when he was a kid.
"They were very accommodating, they let me have a 36-square-foot LEGO city and it was in our living room, so it made for an amazing conversation piece," he laughed.
Little did he know decades later he's give up his career as a corporate lawyer to become a brick artist.
"I was practicing in New York and I would come home at night and I needed some kind of creative outlet. I just thought, what about this toy from my childhood? Could I use it to create sculpture?" he recalled.
Sawaya said he'd look around his apartment and find things to create.
"There's an apple, can I build an apple out of LEGO bricks? Can I build a baseball out of LEGO bricks? It was learning how to take these rectangular pieces and make curved forms out of them. Eventually, I got into creating human forms out of rectangular pieces. That's how I really got started," he said.
In 2007, he debuted "The Art of The Brick," his first exhibit.
"I kept adding pieces to Art of The Brick. Now we have multiple exhibitions touring the globe. It's a dream come true," he smiled.
"The Art of the Brick" features more than 100 of his works, some original, some recreated from photos. There are even reimagined versions of some of the world's most famous pieces of art.
The exhibit includes Van Gogh's "Starry Night," Da Vinci's "Mona Lisa," Michelangelo's "David," and Edvard Munch's "The Scream". Almost all of the artworks in this gallery are to the same scale as the originals.
"Hopefully kids will come through and you can have a conversation about art and art history and the art world. How would you talk to a 5-year old about the Mona Lisa? It's kind tough, but maybe if it's made of a toy that they play with at home, now you can open the door into that conversation," Sawaya said.
The Art of The Brick is the first major museum exhibition to use LEGO bricks as the sole art medium.
"The Art of the Brick reimagines famous artistic masterpieces into LEGO form," said Chevy Humphrey, President and CEO, Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago. "Visitors of all ages will witness art in a whole new way, while celebrating an imaginative and creative medium."
Sawaya sketches out almost all of his projects and uses the exact same bricks that you can buy in the store.
"I do this in my Los Angeles art studio. I have about 10 million bricks in my inventory. It's all sorted by shape and color so while I'm working I can just grab bricks and keep on working," he said.
He said he hopes the exhibition demonstrates the potential of imagination and the power of creativity and inspires visitors to create their own works of art.
Sawaya said he never believed he'd turn his life into building things with LEGOs. He's the first artist to ever take the LEGO toy into the art world as a medium.
"When I first started doing this, the art world kinda laughed at me. I had galleries slam doors in my face when they thought of the term LEGO art, they thought of what they saw at a toy store, like a castle or pirate ship," Sawaya said. "So it's taken the art world a while to accept this, but it has been a fun journey and now I'm at this point where you see other artists using LEGO bricks as an art medium."
A life size human form sculpture typically takes two to four weeks and has 15,000-25,000 bricks.
To date, the show has been seen by 6 million people in 86 cities across six continents.
"This has been all over the world, but I can't believe we've never been in Chicago. I'm so excited to be here at the museum just because this is the place to be. I can't wait to see what the folks of Chicago think of this exhibit. There's a lot to see, so hopefully something for everyone in the family," Sawaya said.
The Art of The Brick at the Museum of Science and Industry will be on display through Sept. 5, 2022. Tickets are not included in Museum Entry. For more information and tickets, visit: msichicago.org/visit/tickets.
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