There is strength in numbers. When bricks stick together, great things can be accomplished. There is no limit for creativity. Sometimes it doesn’t matter what you are building, as long as you’re having fun.
There are those of us who regard Lego bricks as a nostalgic toy from childhood, while others might still occasionally assemble kits as a hobby or as a way to bond with children. We call Lego the toy of the century, and although this toy has undergone extensive development over the years, the foundation remains the traditional Lego brick. Nowadays Lego comes in a wide selection of play sets, Mindstorms, Minifigures, digital games and the Lego play park, Legoland. All of its products have been developed to meet the needs of various markets, from preschoolers to adults for the purposes of entertainment and education.
Select Lego fans have nurtured an unwavering obsession with the tiny plastic bricks, fiddling with them endlessly to create sculptural objects so exquisitely designed they become art. Some artists use a brush to create magnificent paintings, others carve sculptures from bronze or wood, but these artists use bricks to create masterpieces.
There are few people around the globe whom we can call Certified Professional Lego artists. One of them is Sean Kenney, who is based in New York.
Kenney started playing with Lego when he was two years old. He was a Lego maniac and for every birthday Lego was the only gift he asked for. Kenney never intended for Lego to become his livelihood, but he found the art of Lego far more interesting than corporate life.
Inclover (I): Why LEGO? What is the appeal of Lego for you?
Sean Kenney (SK): Working with Lego for a living is a lot of fun! I get to play with toys and make people smile; what better job could there be?
Traditional sculptures in clay, bronze, and stone are very serious-looking. But a sculpture made with Lego bricks is fun and bright and something everyone can relate to. When you look at a Lego sculpture you understand how it was put together and maybe even can imagine doing it yourself. It’s great to watch kids get excited and start creating things themselves. You don’t see that same thing happening when people view bronze sculptures or oil paintings.
And unlike when I was a cartoonist or graphic designer, now I am approached every day by adults and children who tell me how much they love looking at my Lego sculptures. It makes me feel great to know I’m making so many people happy.
I think that Lego toys are great because they really get kid’s minds going. Children become creative in a way that is very hands-on and real. Other crafty activities like drawing and finger-painting do the same thing, but with Lego toys, when the child is done creating they can then also play with their creation!
Lego bricks are also great because kids don’t tire of them the way they do with other toys. Pieces from a child’s very first Duplo set will still interconnect with pieces from a Lego set they get as a pre-teen. Not many toys stay in a child’s toy box for that long!
I: How did your career as a full-time Lego artist evolve?
SK: Before I became a Lego professional, I worked as a cartoonist, a graphic artist, and a website designer. I spent 10 years designing website interfaces and web user experiences, and I wore a suit every day to work. But the whole time, my “inner child” was itching to get out and play! Every night after work I would go home and play with my Lego toys – sometimes while I was still in my suit!
One day I was sitting in my office in a cold-looking, quiet, boring, 40-story glass skyscraper on Park Avenue in New York. I was sitting at my desk but I wasn’t working; I was daydreaming about beautiful architecture and bright Lego colors and thinking about what I would build with Lego bricks when I got home. It was about then that I realized that was exactly what I needed to do. I should follow my dreams. So I stood up, took off my tie, and walked straight out – just like that, in the middle of the day. And I never looked back..
I: How did you come to be a Lego Certified Professional?
SK: As I mentioned, I’ve been playing with Lego toys ever since I was a little kid. Even as I entered my teen years and adulthood, I never stopped building! Eventually, people started commissioning Lego sculptures from me, or asking me to attend events. At the same time, I started having a good relationship with The Lego Group, participating in events or working on projects together. I even started up a Lego fan community.
It turned out that everyone at The Lego Group — from the call center to the CEO — had their eye on what I’d been doing. And we realized that with their support, I could reach out to even more people. Somewhere along the line, we realized that if The Lego Group could somehow officially recognize and support people like me, I could reach even more people and spread the word about Lego-coolness even further. From that idea, the idea of Lego Certified Professionals was born, and I became the first of a handful of members.
It’s now a few years along (since 2005) and there are 13 of us around the world; we all know each other very well, keep on top of each other’s work, do projects together, and learn from each other by sharing our experiences. And as for who’s next, The Lego Group is in charge of who becomes a Lego Certified Professional, and they’re always keeping their eyes peeled for who might be a good fit.
I: What is your most treasured piece of work?
SK: All of my models are a labor of love, so it’s hard to choose a favorite. I’m very partial to a small sculpture I made called “success”. It’s an editorial statement on our society’s overall opinion on what it means to be “successful” and a literal depiction of myself before I left my former career to pursue creating art with Lego bricks full-time..
But I am a New Yorker and I always find myself wandering the city streets and building models of what I see. I have a huge passion for architecture. Perhaps my favorite model is a 50,000 piece city inspired by New York’s historic Greenwich Village.
Lego can be found in every department store and toy store, but for serious collectors online shops are a better option as they provide a very wide selection of Lego and can also be a place to interact with a Lego community, such as Brick Indonesia and Singapore Bricks World, Singapore. One of the biggest Lego marketplaces and communities in Europe is BrickLink. Stefan Kiesel is an affiliate of BrickLink and the founder of Brick Takeover. Kiesel was a young entrepreneur and a business engineering student from Schweinfurt when he started his Lego online store because of his love of Lego. “When I was young I had lots of Lego myself. Someday I wanted to sell my old Lego train tracks and buy some Lego chain links instead, as I was building a Lego excavator. That is how it all began basically”.
Brick Takeover is located in Bayern, Germany. The name itself was created to inspire Kiesel and his team to keep on striving to expand the market. His business philosophy is to keep up quality standards and ensure customer satisfaction. Brick Takeover’s main market right now is Germany and the European Union, but they also have a long list of clients from Asia, Australia and North America. Kiesel also sees the USA as a potential market for the expansion of his business.
His exquisite range of products include Minifigures, technical parts, play sets and every variation of every brick available.
Lego fun facts:
- The LEGO Group was founded in 1932 by Ole Kirk Kristiansen. The company has passed down from father to son and is now owned by Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, a grandchild of the founder.
- Working in a little carpentry workshop, Kristiansen began to build wooden toys, starting with a wooden duck.
- The company name ‘Lego’ comes from the Danish word leg godt, which means ‘play well’.
- The phrase also translates as ‘I put together’ in Latin.
- Lego produces nearly 20 billion bricks a year, or 36,000 bricks per minute.
- If you stack 40,000,000,000 Lego bricks, it would reach the moon.
- There are 915 ways to combine six Lego bricks.
- Approximately seven Lego sets are sold each second.
Photo by: Sean Kenney
