Sci-Fi Bulletin: Exploring the Universes of SF, Fantasy, Horror and Spy-fi!

Former NYC lawyer Nathan Sawaya follows up his previous Art of the Brick exhibition in London with a new collection of LEGO pieces featuring DC’s comic book heroes. We caught up with the artist on the eve of the show’s opening to discover inspiration, technique and favourite colour. No, really!

Nathan, I’ve just spent a wonderful ninety minutes looking around this exhibition  but sitting here in the Batcave, interviewing you on the same podium as a full-scale Batmobile, is a career highlight. I’m sure that many boys and girls have dreamed of building their own full-size Batmobile, but where do you start?

This particular Batmobile was an interesting project because I was working on an exhibition about superheroes and super villains and I got the opportunity to work with legendary comic book artist Jim Lee. Jim has drawn hundreds of Batmobiles in the comics, so we got the opportunity to collaborate and come up with a brand new Batmobile. This one we see here has some elements that are very recognisable and yet it’s a brand new design. We started with Jim drawing out some ideas and then I took his drawing and used that as the basis for this piece. And then it was just building it – brick by brick by brick. I started at the front with the nose and worked on different elements as I went through.

Is it really important to have a strong chassis to support the creation so it doesn’t fold under its own weight?

Sure, but just to be clear, the chassis is completely built out of LEGO. A lot of people might assume that there there’s some interior steel structure or base, but for this particular piece I decided I wanted it pure LEGO. You’ve got half a million LEGO bricks here, so it weighs quite a bit!

Unlike sculpture, where every stroke is final, LEGO construction allows you to go back and reposition a piece. Do you do this, or is every brick’s location final? 

It’s additive sculpture – you just keep adding and adding pieces to get to that final form. You do have the opportunity to remove pieces as you go, but the way I work a lot of the time I’m gluing [the dreaded Kragle] the pieces together as I go. So, if I do want to remove something it’s with a hammer and chisel, and I don’t want to start breaking stuff up. I go into these projects knowing I need a lot of time because that’s the nature of it. I’ve also done something where I’ve chiselled apart days’ worth of work, so you need to have a clear idea in your head of what you want. It’s not for everyone a big project like this, but I almost go into a trance when I’m working; I find it almost therapeutic, building brick by brick. You keep going until you feel like you’ve got it.

When that final piece goes in, do you get the same satisfaction you get putting the final piece in a jigsaw? 

I’d love to say there’s a special moment and you hear the music swell as you put on that final piece, but it’s usually just me alone in the studio, snapping that last one on, brushing my hands off and moving on to something else. It depends. As an artist – and I’m sure you’ve heard this before – you start off really excited and get really pumped up for a new idea. I’m working on it and it’s going to be great, but then I start to dip down for a while and as I put more and more work into it I’m like: ‘I don’t know if this such a great idea.’ I start to get frustrated, but I keep adding bricks, keep adding bricks, and build back up to that excitement again as I reach the end.

And that excitement is palpable as people walk into the rooms of the exhibition and see what you’ve constructed.

The hope is that when folks walk through this exhibition they are excited. They see characters they know, they meet characters they don’t know, and they learn a little bit about the history of comics. But also they get inspired and excited by seeing something that’s built out of this toy that we’ve all snapped together at some point in our lives. It’s used in a different way – an enormous way, when it comes to something like this Batmobile.

I love the commentary you’ve added to each piece, explaining your motivation and letting us know about your childhood, your dog, your pet goldfish and your mom. How important is for you that every piece has got your personality in there?

I think that’s critical. I think we wanted to tell a bit of a story with this exhibition and that story may not mean a comic book story but part of it is just going through the process of what I went through in creating this entire exhibition… and that personalises it a bit.

I would imagine that a lot of people think that there’s a machine that scans a subject and just pumps out the bricks to create it in LEGO form. And yet you only need to look at these pieces to see that there’s some soul in here, some artistry that a machine couldn’t create.

I think there are certain types of models – in say a toy store – that would work that way, but what I wanted to do was take it into a different direction. You’ll see that these pieces are interpreted in a way that these superheroes have never been interpreted before. And that was the idea. OK, we’ve got 75 years of history with these characters, so how can I do something that we’ve never seen before with these characters? And do it out of this toy?

I love the way you share some of your construction hints and challenges – how you created Wonder Woman’s lasso or dealt with Angel Superman’s wings. 

When you’re building with LEGO and it gets big enough that you’ve got to take it off the kitchen table and put it on the floor, you’ve got engineering issues. I think that any child can tell you that when they build that tower out of LEGO bricks that at a certain point it tips over, and that’s something I have to avoid.

I had a real geek moment when I saw the 1960’s TV Batmobile you’ve created, especially because at Christmas my wife bought me the Classic Batcave set and although I love it, there are concessions that were made with the design. You, however, have every detail, down to the red phone and fire extinguisher.

And can I say what a great set that is, down to the smallest detail. It’s funny that you brought that particular piece up; it was one of the very first things I did for the exhibition. I didn’t want to focus too much on representational – I wanted to put my own twist on things – but I thought that if we’re going to kick things off let’s go to the Batmobile that I knew as a child. This is the Batmobile I watched Batman drive on TV, and I really wanted to do it justice, really do it as accurately as possible to the original Ventura.

And it does; it looks wonderful. I might have been tempted to run away with it, but I’ve decided that it’s too big and heavy to smuggle out under my jacket and someone would stop me before I left!

Ha! [Laughs] I would hope so! It’s a bit of a beast. It’s a two person lift.

I love the fact that the exhibition is called Art of the Brick, because these are pieces of art. For me, LEGO has reached a maturity now that transcends it from being just a toy to being a valid creative medium.

Yes, you want to encourage and inspire people to build up to the next big project, whatever it is. As an artist, that’s all you can ask for, to inspire new creativity.

Do you get a great buzz in seeing kids leaving the Batcave and diving into the containers of bricks outside?

I’ll tell you, I’ve seen it already in other exhibitions. Kids see the pieces and they will hit me up on Twitter or Instagram or email me and say: ‘Look what I did. I saw your art and it inspired me to do this.’ That’s a very special moment; it’s tangible proof that it’s reaching people and actually inspiring creativity. I couldn’t ask for anything more.

There’s huge exposure of the medium now in hit movies like The LEGO Movie and now The LEGO Batman Movie.

The brand itself is exploding in all different directions, and not just from an age level perspective. Yes, kids to adults enjoy LEGO, but also from a geography point of view. I’ve been to every continent, except Antarctica, with art exhibitions built out of LEGO and everyone knows it. Everyone is familiar with it, and that’s… impressive.

Have you visited the new Leicester Square LEGO store; it’s the biggest of its kind in the world.

Well I would, but I can’t get in. There are queues round the block.

Don’t you qualify for a front-of-line pass?

Maybe, but the great thing about LEGO is that it can be enjoyed everywhere – it’s universal. I don’t think I could bear to take a front-of-line pass because we all are fans of it. Part of the process is being in the queue – that excitement to get in there.

Nothing can compare to opening a fresh box of LEGO, pouring out the pieces and starting to arrange them. As a child, were you a conformist, following the instructions slavishly, or did you, even at that age, go off-plan?

When I started I guess I was around five. I was building a little house or something and started experimenting fairly early on. When I was 10, I had a LEGO city, my folks and I were talking and I wanted to get a dog. They said: ‘No, you’re not getting a dog.’ And I tore down a section of that city and built myself a life-size dog!

And you’re still building dogs! Hence the Krypto model.

It was very blocky and multi-coloured but I look back and think that was probably the first ‘aha!’ moment when I can I say I realised that it’s not what’s on the front of the box that matters, it’s what you can do with the pieces inside. If I wanted to pretend to be a pop star, I could just tear down another building and build myself a guitar. If I wanted to be an astronaut I could tear down another and build myself a rocket ship. At an early age I realised this toy had potential and that’s why later in life I would come back to it as an art medium.

Have people ever said you can’t be a LEGO artist as a living and that you should stick to the law? They are of course wrong!

When I made that transition from being a corporate attorney in New York City to being an artist that works solely with LEGO, I think there was some confusion [Laughs]. My family were supportive, my colleagues at the law firm were, I think, a bit jealous because I was leaving the grind of the law firm to follow my dream. And I think my bosses were just confused! When I think back to those days I realise that the worst day as an artist is still better than the best day as a lawyer.

Onwards and upwards are you already planning your next installation?

Well yeah, I keep wanting to experiment with LEGO and keep seeing what can be done with it as an art medium. I have six million bricks in my Los Angeles art studio, so think I’ll stick with it for a little bit longer. I want to try some new things – you’ll  have to wait and see!

Let’s get geeky now. Do you have a favourite colour brick, and a brick type?

Favourite colour? That’s a good question. When it comes to the LEGO palette of colours, I focus on the greys. There are a couple of different shades [not 50?] and I really like grey as a colour. When it comes to the pieces, wow, there are a lot of elements out there. As you can see, I focus a lot on the rectangular pieces and the reason being is that when you see these sculptures up close you realise that these sharp lines and corners are made up of little rectangles. These little boxes create the larger forms. When you back away from the sculptures and look from a different perspective, all those corners blend into curves, and that’s really the magic of LEGO.

Have you ever asked LEGO to create a custom piece for you, to get you out of a spot?

That’s a very important question, and the answer is no, I have purposely not asked them to do that, because my hope is to inspire. If children or adults walk through this exhibition and are inspired to create something, then I want them to be able to buy the very same pieces I use. These are all standard LEGO brick in standard LEGO colours. That’s the great thing about LEGO – if something is not working right then you can always tear it apart and find a different way to build it.

Tickets can be bought from http://www.aotbdc.co.uk and if you go on a Monday they only cost £10 each.

For more information about Nathan Sawaya and his artwork, visit http://www.nathansawaya.com. For more information about The Art of the Brick, visit http://www.brickartist.com.

Photo of grey Batman, and the artist with the Batmobile & Wonder Woman by Dominic Lonergan, used with permission; other photos by Nick Joy