HoW to pLaY WeLL: Learn to LEGO®

30 Jan 2008 4 Comments

by madsilence in Art, Creativity, Culture, Life, News, Popular Culture, Sculpture, Thoughts Tags: LEGO, toys

You may have noticed Monday that the Google logo was made of little colored bricks: 

January 28, 2008 marked the 50th anniversary of LEGO®. 

Who can doubt the enormous influence of those little plastic bricks?  I played with them as a child, as did my children.  As toy, artistic medium, and architectural building block—used in space, science and robotics projects—LEGO has done it all. 

The appeal of LEGO to the artist is obvious: the small, brightly colored plastic building blocks, which come in multiple shapes and sizes, are easily manipulated and infinitely malleable.

LEGO has been used to:

Sculpt the human body
Recreate Da Vinci’s The Last Supper
Build a church and congregation
Create life-size human busts
Recreate Las Vegas with its casinos and hotels
Build skyscrapers
“Paint” portraits
Create cityscapes with 3 tons of LEGO bricks

The word LEGO is derived from the Danish words “leg godt” which have a rough English translation of “play well”.

Related links:

LEGO The official website of the manufacturer
Top 10 Strangest Lego Creationsfrom techeblog.com
LEGO History from Gizmodo:  LEGO Brick Timeline: 50 Years of Building Frenzy and Curiosities  and   Best LEGO Sets in History
Man builds a living out of LEGO  from CNN.com (6/1/07)
LEGO from the National Toy Hall of Fame at Strong Museum
LEGO  from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Related MadSilence post:  coffee + creativity = art

~TAB