Bill Ward’s Brickpile

Happy New Year everyone!

This is my first abstract LEGO sculpture. I was inspired by someone (sorry I don’t remember who it is right now) who brought several abstract art pieces to Bricks by the Bay last year made out of the dark pink 1×2 slopes, which were available at the LEGO store Pick-A-Brick wall. I always wanted to do the same and finally I got around to it, producing a series of small fractal models and eventually coming up with this monster.

I built this out of about two Pick-A-Brick cups’ worth of the slopes. It is what I call “lower-case F fractal” in that I don’t know if there’s any math behind it, but it does have self-similarity as I understand it. The basic element is 3 bricks stacked together with one going off to the side, and torqued as far as the slack in the parts will allow. Using that same angle (determined by the slack in the parts) I then built up 5, 10, 20, brick heights following the curve until it meets its neighbor.

This picture was taken on the final day of BayLUG‘s exhibit at the Museum of American Heritage in Palo Alto, CA (January 9, 2011) and is a part of a set of photos taken on the last day and during teardown.

My latest LEGO model, just in time for Christmas, is the Nutcracker, a classic Christmas icon. In fact, it was built on Christmas Eve!

Inspired by the ballet by Alexandre Dumas père (an adaptation of the story “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King” by E. T. A. Hoffmann), set to music by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky and staged by Marius Petipa. My wife and I saw the San Francisco Ballet version of this last week, and I’ve been wanting to make a LEGO nutcracker ever since. I was going to make a big one, about two feet tall, but haven’t got around to it yet… in the meantime I really like the way this little guy came out.

The mechanism functions pretty well; by lifting his coattails his mouth opens, just like real wooden nutcrackers. Of course, being the size that he is, you can’t crack much of a nut with it, which is probably just as well since it would most likely fall apart in your hands if you tried – LEGO studs’ clutch power is no match for your average nut.

Click on any of the images for a bigger view, or go to the Flickr photo set (slideshow)

Merry Christmas!

So, I was scanning through the #lego Twitter search results and came across this one: 48 of the Coolest, Stylish and Creative Lego Creations. About halfway down, they featured my “LEGO, Robert Indiana style” sculpture. How cool is that? There are 47 other great models featured as well, so be sure to check it out…

Inspired by my LEGO version of Robert Indiana’s "LOVE" sculpture, I made another one that spells "LEGO," incorporating different colors for the interior of each letter.

The only hard part design-wise was coming up with a “G” design that matched the other letters, since “LOVE” already provided me with a design for “L,” “E,” and “O.” But structurally, I found it to be much more of a challenge to build the “LEGO” sculpture, largely because the round letters on the bottom didn’t provide nearly as good support for the top letters as the “VE” in “LOVE” did. However, thanks to some very long bricks (1×16 and 2×10) I was able to make it work.

My wife and I discussed the color scheme extensively before we finally decided on the one you see here. I wanted to keep blue and green apart from each other, and I wanted to keep red on the right hand side in case it is displayed next to the “LOVE” sculpture. (Sadly, I don’t have any good photographs of the two together – I didn’t have any place big enough that didn’t have a horrible background – but hopefully I can update later to add one.)

Heart sculptures I made several years ago for my wife on Valentine’s Day, but never posted pictures of online until now. They are puffed hearts in four sizes.

See slideshow or just view the photoset page on Flickr.

A LEGO version of Robert Indiana’s iconic "LOVE" sculpture from 1970. Best known for its regular appearance on postage stamps, the original sculpture is on permanent display in Philadelphia and copies are in many cities around the world. Built for the BayLUG "All You Build Is Love" challenge from the February 2009 meeting (which, not to brag, it won).

See slideshow or just view the photoset page on Flickr.

The original, for reference:

LOVE Park in Philadelphia, PA in winter. Photo is looking down the Ben Franklin Parkway to the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

Local artist Emiko Oye has been building jewelry out of LEGO and other recycled materials for a while now. I met her at Maker Faire last spring. She brings a really interesting perspective to LEGO, treating it as a fine art medium rather than as a hobby the way most adult LEGO fans do.

Her latest accomplishment is a solo exhibit at the San Francisco Museum of Craft + Design featuring works inspired by Cartier and Boucheron, early 20th century jewelry, built in LEGO. I haven’t been to see the exhibit yet, but I’m hoping to soon. In the meantime here’s the info:

My First Royal Jewels
Interactive LEGO art exhibition by emiko oye
San Francisco Museum of Craft + Design
550 Sutter St, SF CA 94102
Through Jan 4, 2009

You can see images of the show on her Flickr account, or learn more about her at rewarestyle.com.

I’m a little late into the LEGO Wall-E modeling craze, but when I had the idea of using minfig legs for the head, I couldn’t resist. I had the idea when I balanced a minifig on his head on a silicone LEGO coaster and my wife saw it and thought it was WALL-E at first. I thought “Hmm, ya know, those legs do look a little like WALL-E’s eyes….” and went to work.

So this is certainly not the first LEGO version of WALL-E, nor is it the smallest. But I think it’s the only one I’ve ever seen to use minifig legs for a head, and I haven’t seen one that included the cooler that WALL-E used to collect knickknacks.

Click the image for the rest of the pictures, including a disassembled view that shows how it went together. Or try the slideshow.

My version of a spaceman from the Classic Space of the early 80′s. Built to "miniland scale" like the models in Miniland in the Legoland theme parks.

Built for the LEGO Creativity Challenge #6. I just wish LEGO had produced the 1×2 brick with classic space logo in red! I thought about building a white one, but my white classic space bricks are too faded — although I think they were pretty pale when I first got them almost 30 years ago. Plus, I don’t have all the parts in white I’d need…

Still, I’m hoping that even in blue, it’ll still tug the heartstrings enough to help win the contest!

Click the picture for the Flickr gallery, or view a slideshow.