Popular LEGO art exhibit hits Raleigh, with displays from ‘Mona Lisa’ to tyrannosaurs

The exhibit begins with a human head the size of a Halloween pumpkin made entirely out of gray LEGOs, which would be impressive enough except that its artist also sculpted four brick people crawling out of the sawed-off cranium — one of them holding a golden key.

Along the way, Raleigh’s new all-LEGO art collection hits viewers with a black and blue portrait of Andy Warhol, then a collage of colorful skulls, then a perfect replica of “American Gothic” accurate down to the button on the farmer’s collar.

So as a dabbling art critic, a LEGO enthusiast and a father who has spent multiple Christmas mornings on his knees, searching for the last brown brick for a Jurassic Park safari Jeep, I offer this review:

I should have thought of this first.

“The Art of the Brick” opened Thursday, May 18, in a north Raleigh strip mall called Pleasant Valley Promenade, behind a Dick’s Sporting Goods, in a surprisingly good space (a former movie theater) that also hosted the recent Van Gogh immersive experience.

For about an hour, anybody who ever dreamed of assembling the Star Wars Death Star can see the limits what LEGOs offer as a sculpting medium — which, for me, has got to be the two dozen hands reaching from a sea of scattered red bricks the size of a backyard pool, straight out of Dante’s Inferno.

This vision in LEGO comes to us via Nathan Sawaya, a onetime Manhattan attorney who toiled in mergers and acquisitions before chucking a six-figure salary to enter a national LEGO contest — which he won, taking a brick artist’s job as his prize.

“He quit his job as a lawyer in New York and got a job building LEGOs,” said Melinda Jackson, a publicist for the exhibit. “It’s insane.”

A 2003 Newsday profile followed Sawaya’s LEGO itch back to Christmas day in 1978, when as a 5 year old he transformed the living room floor into a multi-colored megalopolis, then graduated to a scale model of the Oregon state capitol. Even as a freshman in his New York University dorm, he secretly toyed with his brick collection.

Once childhood fascination blossomed into a full-time gig, his LEGO work turned up everywhere: as a 20-foot tyrannosaurus, as a mosaic replica of Lindsay Lohan’s face, as a 7-foot recreation of the Brooklyn Bridge — all touring cities and museums for the last 16 years.

As I write this, “Art of the Brick” is also showing in Atlanta, which is rumored to be a more immersive experience for the little ones.

But in an hour of roaming the Raleigh gallery, I saw Sawaya built a full-size Venus de Milo out of 18,000 LEGOs — and think of how much higher that total would go had she any arms.

The other art museum classics hit the exhibit’s high notes, especially Monet’s “Saint Georges Majeur au Crepscule” rendered in 3,708 orange and magenta bricks, or Gustave Klimt’s “The Kiss” reconstructed to life-size with 18,893 yellows and browns.

The real message you pull from his blockish figures, who all look like Minecraft characters wearing full-body leotards, is that art springs from what is nearest and most cherished.

This aesthetic truth holds whether an artist is a kindergartner given a tubful of dry macaroni or a frustrated philosophy student working exclusively in black shoe polish.

And with LEGOs as a tool, an artist like Sawaya shows the mechanics of the world meticulously snapped together, pulled apart and even — in the most visceral moments — stepped-on.

How to go: The Art of the Brick in Raleigh

What: The Art of the Brick

Where: Pleasant Valley Promenade, Glenwood Avenue in Raleigh (behind Dick’s Sporting Goods)

When: May 18 until an indefinite ending

Open: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily, except Tuesdays

Tickets: $21.90 for adults 13 and up, $13.90 for children, $18.90 for seniors, students and the disabled.

More information: theartofthebrickexpo.com/raleigh