Jonathan Lopes insists that almost anyone could do his job. And many people would certainly like to: he is a visual artist whose medium is LEGO bricks.
“They are to me what paints are to a painter,” Lopes says. In his new book, New York City Brick by Brick, he presents his vision of the Big Apple in the form of a collection of painstakingly recreated city structures, from a two-metre high Woolworth Building to a 30-centimetre model of a little fire station he spotted in Brooklyn. All made of LEGO, of course.
Lopes’s obsession started in 1999, the year he bought his first LEGO kit as an adult. Back then, he didn’t know it would go on to become his career. But the scale of the builds demands it. At 2.3 metres tall, the Woolworth building alone is made of 100,000 LEGO pieces and took 220 hours to build. Lopes’s first major project – a replica of his Brooklyn neighbourhood built in his living room – measures five by three metres.
Before he became a brick artist, Lopes was pursuing a career as a musician. Then, in his late 20s, he bought one of LEGO’s first Star Wars kits – and never looked back. He soon started building his own replicas of train stations, houses and bridges in New York, following one key principle: observation. “LEGO is very mathematical, but my process doesn’t involve that,” he says. “I look at things and then roughly sketch them on paper to make sure they look right aesthetically. Then I build them.”
Lopes knows the LEGO palette inside out, so he can immediately visualise which brick combinations will work for the different shapes he wants to create. But he does not see his work as play. Instead, he hopes to tell the real story of the city: not just the shiny Grand Central Terminal, but also the gritty, run-down urban sprawl.
Using mostly earth-tone colours, he makes a point of recreating decaying fire stations or broken down railroad lines as much as well-known skyscrapers. “I don’t want to build the happiest little building,” he says. “The challenge is to create urban realism with a children’s toy – whether that is a gorgeous and pristine building, or one that is completely weathered down.”
Using the toy bricks to reproduce weeds, rustiness or even broken glass is what differentiates his work from other projects, Lopes says. But being a LEGO artist isn’t all fun. He is not working in partnership with the Danish manufacturer, which means he has to negotiate his own exhibitions with museums and galleries. “It’s creatively fulfilling, but ultimately it is like running a small business,” he says. “Yes, you play LEGO for a living, but in reality you are also spending a lot of time trying to monetise it.” Playtime gets real.
This article was originally published by WIRED UK
