Sawaya’s art is currently touring North American museums in a show titled, The Art of the Brick. It’s the only exhibition focusing exclusively on LEGO as an art medium. The creations, constructed from nearly one million pieces, were built from standard bricks beginning as early as 2000.
Born in Colville, Washington and raised in Veneta, Oregon, Sawaya’s childhood dreams were always fun. He drew cartoons, wrote stories, perfected magic tricks and also played with LEGO. Sawaya attended NYU. After college he rediscovered LEGO but not as a toy, but rather as a medium.
Today Sawaya has more than 1.5 million colored bricks in his New York art studio. His work is obsessively and painstakingly crafted and is both beautiful and playful. Sawaya’s 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 to the status of fine art.
According to journalist Scott Jones, “Sawaya is a surrealist mash-up of 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.”
Sawaya’s art form takes shape primarily in 3-dimensional sculptures and oversized portraits. He continues to create daily while accepting commission work from around the world. Check out his work at http://brickartist.com/
His work has been featured in collections including:
• Lancaster Museum of Art in Lancaster, PA
• Strong National Museum of Play in Rochester, NY
• Art and Culture Center in Hollywood, FL
• Time Warner Center public art display in New York, NY
• Qwest Field public art display in Seattle, WA
• The Toy Museum in Bellaire, OH
• Dreier Collection in Santa Barbara, CA
• National Museum of the Marine Corps in Quantico, VA
• Central Park public art display in New York, NY
• New Orleans Public Library public art display in New Orleans, LA
• American Swedish Museum in Philadelphia, PA
• Discovery Center Museum in Rockford, IL
• Stamford Museum in Stamford, CT
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