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Item Barcode | Collection | Call Number | Status | Item Holds |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 33607002858234 | Adult Nonfiction | 688.7 DOYLE | Searching... Unknown | Searching... Unavailable |
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Summary
Summary
Mix hundreds of thousands of LEGO bricks with dozens of artists, and what do you get? Beautiful LEGO, a compendium of LEGO artwork that showcases a stunning array of pieces ranging from incredibly lifelike replicas of everyday objects and famous monuments to imaginative renderings of spaceships, mansions, and mythical creatures. You ll also meet the minds behind the art. Interviews with the artists take you inside the creative process that turns simple, plastic bricks into remarkable LEGO masterpieces.
Author Notes
Mike Doyle is an internationally acclaimed LEGO artist and known for his stunningly realistic, grand-scale designs. His award-winning Abandoned House series has been showcased at Gallery1988 in LA and Boston's Museum of Realist Art. His largest piece to date is Contact I -a 6 6-foot masterwork built from more than 200,000 LEGO elements. When not constructing LEGO art, Doyle works as a graphic designer. He lives with his wife and two children in New Jersey.
Reviews (2)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Legos have been a building block of childhoods around the world for decades (the Danish company, the Lego Group, was founded in 1949), but as graphic designer Doyle demonstrates in this impressive collection of 360 Lego models, they're far from child's play. The book showcases the work of 77 artists, who offer a wildly divergent results: from portraits of Freddie Mercury and the monsters from Alien to dissected frogs, space stations, and chromed-out hot rods. Though Doyle humbly waits until the middle of the book to showcase a few of his own sculptures, they are among the most striking. His stark black-and-white renderings of an elegant Victorian house damaged by an uprooted tree, as well as the book's cover (a massive futuristic city with countless spires) are nothing short of breathtaking. Brief bios of the creators accompany each entry, with the artists discussing what drew them to Lego bricks and their approach to design. One featured artist, Jordan Schwartz, may have achieved the ultimate goal: landing a job at Lego as a product designer due in part to his creations. Surprisingly, the book doesn't include specifications such as the dimensions of the pieces or the number of bricks used, nor are there images of works-in-progress. If readers can forgive that, they will be mesmerized by this astonishing collection. Full-color illus. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Library Journal Review
Contributors to this volume elevate LEGO construction to an art form. For these 80 builders, many of whom are self-admitted geeks, ambitious builds provide the perfect balance of technical challenge, problem-solving, and creativity. The LEGO block also has appeal as a recyclable medium owing to its precise manufacturing standard since 1958. The selection here is curated by Doyle, a graphic designer and LEGO artist known for his 200,000-brick fantasy cityscape Contact I as well as models of abandoned, deteriorating Victorian houses. The results of his worldwide call yielded a variety of online submissions, including works of architecture, fantasy worlds, monsters, and robots, ranging from simple figures pared down to their essence to technically complex and intricately detailed naturalistic figures. Doyle has enhanced the images for publication in print, retouching the figures and adding backgrounds. He provides brief biographical interviews for several of the best-known artists to reveal their beginnings, inspirations, and artistic challenges. VERDICT Fans of LEGO building will find inspiration in this volume, and others will be astonished by the surprising, fun creations.-Nancy B. Turner, Syracuse Univ. Lib., NY (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.