The Picasso of Legos

Nathan Sawaya left his life as a lawyer to make modern art out of toy blocks.

A: All right, it’s time to meet our featured guest this morning. He's called the Picasso of Legos. I say, more like a Norman Rockwelth of Legos coz' look how literal all these representations are. We are gonna have the fun now with Nathan Sawaya. He is here. He was a lawyer. He decided to get into art, sculpture, then moved to the wonderful land of Legos. He has joined us today. You have your book "The Art of the Brick" which is taking your walk all over the country. You have families flooding the museums (Exactly!) because you’re using Legos.

B: I’m using Lego. I’m using something that every child's played with. And yet I’m using it in a different way. I’m using it as fine art.

A: Absolutely, now a very interesting back story here. You’re a lawyer, (Sure) you are totally in a way just as I was. (Right) You are in the Wall Street world, (Exactly) and one day you think to yourself?

B: Lego. Lego is the answer. You know, I wanted to explore my creativity and that's what I do at the end of the day. After the law firm, I come home and be creative. And soon I was making a whole career out of being creative, and I left the law firm behind. And now I have a whole museum exhibit, that's touring the US.

A: Say, now I get the artistic part. You know, you had something else , another appetite, another need of passion to feed. (Sure) Where does the Lego come in?

B: Well, I’d always been a kid who played with Lego growing up. I had been an art kid, and I played with Lego, so eventually I merged the two. I wanted to find a way I could use that passion of Lego and make it into an art.

A: Did you know you had the talent?

B: Well, I...

A: Coz' you know, this is not the playing with Lego, this is a real deal.

B: I had a Lego, a Lego CD growing up. My parents were very accommodating. They had given me this entire Lego city in our living room. So I used that as a starting point. And now I move those Legos into a whole new world.

A: Amazing. You tour around the country, how long will a work like the note?, which is...this is actually a female's face, right?

B: Yes, a female's face with a musical note on.

A: How long did you spend?

B: For depends on, you know, how inspired I am. And this piece exactly came off of a project where I was once saw a friend singing and really inspired me to really capture her singing in a Lego format, the music coming through her. So this took, you know, actually came off very quickly because I was just immediately inspired to creating this.

A: Meaning what?

B: Couple of days.

A: Couple of days. (Couple of days.) And the results, tens of thousands of dollars this go for. (Exactly.) Certainly respected as are....You get hook-up with Lego, by the way? (Lego, er) Are you and Lego.. they are hooking you up coz' this is a studio...

B: I'd love to buy my bricks but we have a good relationship.(Really?) Yes, I do get the E-mails from Lego employees saying how they love my work, they are amazed that I can take their toy product and creat art.

A: So you have all of these different forms of men (Sure.), this room was very cleverly suggested as the White Castle as what happened when you eat White Castle. There were dozens of...

B: Nice. No, and not exactly. But these pieces are, you know, transition pieces, you see these people, these figures going through trasition met more offices if you will...

A: All individual pieces that you then glued together, (Exactly) from a little one to an angular one, making all round shapes out of lots of square pieces.

B: Exactly, that’s the magic of the Lego. These three pieces right here are actually at the Standford Museum right now as part of the tour. And some of these pieces behind this are actually gonna be part of a new tour that will be starting out this summer.

A: And how do you keep? You want the kids to come but you don't want them to do what I wanna do right now is just pull the head off this and start to make different pieces. How do you do that , you know, you just keep them away but you feel the temptation when you watch audiences coz' everybody wants to play with.

B: It is! It’s something that we've all played with. So they want to ,you know, go up and touch them , and feel them, and play with them just like.... But in a museum setting, there’s some .....

A: Some to call, (Exactly) all right, that's why they don't let me in. You know, Nathan made a great point, he said, you know, people don't have big pieces of marbles in their homes. But Legos everybodys have makes it approachable (Exactly.) takes this to a new dimension. (And you can relate to it) You have little ones for us here.

B: I did. I took some time and made some gifts for everyone.

A: And these are nice representations of what each of us means.

B: Exactly. Exactly. Robern, for you, basketball.

Oh~! The Lego basketball.

A: That's gorgeous. Thank you very much!

Dian, for you, tulips to celebrate Spring.

Oh, how lovely! Thank you!

Sam, you have the wonderful weather symbols you can use over and over again.

Now I have to steal the ones off the map that you made. (Exactly) Thank you!

And Chris, (that's nice!) Yes, you like that?

That's great!

White Castle: the oldest American hamburger fast food restaurant chain. It is known for square burgers, sometimes referred to as "sliders" (officially spelled and trademarked as "Slyders")