The Art Of The Brick: 5 Years Later

It's been a little over 5 years since the last time Nathan Sawaya's The Art Of The Brick set up shop at the Oregon Museum Of Science & Industry in Portland, Oregon....

2012                                                      2017 

Last weekend I visited OMSI to see if, and how, The Art Of The Brick had changed in those 5 years....

Well, it had changed... it had grown, to be sure. The exhibit's square footage had increased, for one thing. And there were way more pieces to enjoy.

When I first walked into the exhibit, they had us gather in a small area. Then they made us newcomers watch a 4-minute video about Mr. Sawaya's career. I imagine this was just to stagger the crowd, but I would've preferred to just walk straight in. Guess it beats standing in line, though.

When the video concluded, we were able to walk into the first part of the exhibit, where there were a bunch of LEGO-built art replicas. Mosaics, mostly. They were neat in their own way, but... I guess I prefer "the real thing" when it comes to 2D art.

But then things got more interesting. The art started becoming three-dimensional....

For some reason, I really liked that. 

I also didn't mind Sawaya's replicas of notable statues and sculptures...

Actually, pretty much all his sculptures were impressive....

This yellow guy is one of Sawaya's iconic pieces. It's so special, it even got its own room in the exhibit! Ooooh, aaaah...

This next one was cool. You could only see The Eye if you took some steps back and looked at the piece from a certain angle.

Life-sized furniture is fun!

Overall, my favorite part of The Art Of The Brick this time around was the photography exhibit called In Pieces. For this, Sawaya and his collaborators built real-size objects out of LEGO...

Then used them as props in some really cool photographs...

I probably spent the most time in this area, looking at the life-size objects and trying to find them in the photographs. What a cool idea!

OMSI's The Art Of The Brick exhibit spanned 2 levels of the museum, and it was definitely worth the extra charge ($) to see. TAOTB will only be at OMSI through May 29th, so if you haven't seen it yet -- go. Even if you saw it when it was here in 2012, go! While a few of the pieces (sculptures, etc.) were there back in 2012, a large number of the items are new this time around. There's a wide variety and a lot of it is really impressive.

The Art Of The Brick can also currently be seen in these other locations. To find out where the exhibit(s) will travel next, check out this page.