The Ship has Come in for Local LEGO Artist

January 2005

The Seattle Post-Intelligencer
January 2005
By Kristin Dizon

Nathan Sawaya sees worlds and universes when he looks at a little rectangular brick of plastic.

Right now his universe is a 10-foot-long speedboat he's building out of Lego bricks at the Qwest Field Event Center. The Seattle Boat Show commissioned Sawaya to build a replica of a sleek, navy-blue Chris-Craft speedster, to be completed at breakneck pace during the 10 days of the boating extravaganza.

Nathan Sawaya has been putting in 14- to 18-hour days building his Chris-Craft replica at the Seattle Boat Show.

"It's my passion," Sawaya says of Lego sculpting, while slapping blue tiles to the top of his boat's hull. "Maybe that's trite to say. But when I take on a big project, that's all I dream about at night."

Sawaya, 31, hopes to be finished this morning, but he has until Sunday evening to beat the clock. Show organizers hope the sculpture makes it into the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest Lego boat.

This is the biggest project that Sawaya has attempted, considerably larger than the 7-foot-tall orange and red T-Rex he made last year.

By birth and childhood, Sawaya is a local boy. He was born in Colville, spent the first six years of his life in Olympia, then lived in a small town outside of Eugene, Ore., until he went to college in New York City, where he's lived ever since.

Last year, Sawaya got his childhood dream job -- working at Legoland in Carlsbad, Calif., as a Lego master builder for seven months. He was hired after winning a national contest, in which he beat 26 contenders.

Ever since his grandparents sent him a Lego set for Christmas in 1978, Sawaya has loved expressing his artistic side through the famous Danish brickettes. He soon took over the family's living room, building his 36-foot-square childhood masterpiece -- a Lego city that grew and grew, with police headquarters, a bank, even a fast-food joint called McLego's.

The downside? Some social consequences.

"In high school, it's not the coolest thing, I found," he says with dry wit. Same with college, so he kept his Legos under a bed in his dorm room, a time he wryly refers to as "the dark days."

But, in the years after college, he made peace with his art. "I've accepted it. Friends have accepted it," he says. "It's become something I cherish."

Now he prefers to be called a professional Lego artist, and says that one actually could make a living at it, albeit a bit of a Bohemian one, with enough trade shows, corporate logos and company events.

But, Sawaya does have a full-time job, as a lawyer who handles corporate mergers and acquisitions.

It is, however, the Lego-ing, not the lawyering, that has landed him on TV on the "Today" show and in magazines such as Newsweek.

What was a late-night, blurry-eyed obsession is turning into a second career, with commissioned projects. Sawaya said his work generally starts at several hundred dollars and goes up. A two-dimensional Seattle mosaic-style skyscape is tagged at $1,100.

For the Chris-Craft speedster -- a real 20-foot one sits just behind his model -- Sawaya is using dozens of shapes of bricks in eight colors. He's a detail-oriented artist: the chairs swivel, the propeller spins, the steering wheel will turn, and the American flag -- with anchor instead of stars -- even appears to undulate.

Sawaya won't disclose the estimated number of bricks the boat is made of, because there's a contest to win a trip for four to Legoland for guessing the closest. But he does let on that there are more than 100,000 in the 10-foot-long, 4-foot-wide sculpture, which he estimates will weigh about 1,000 pounds when done.

Michael Campbell, president of the Northwest Marine Trade Association, which produces the Seattle Boat Show, said he saw Sawaya on TV and thought it would be fun to have him build a boat.

"Every time you put on an event, you're trying to make it fun for the people to come, and you want to do something different," Campbell says.

On Thursday, the boat was about 60 percent finished, with the sleek hood, rear section, clear windshield and bench seating to be done. The first few days, Sawaya worked 14 hours, then ramped up to 18-hour days. He said a project of this size, which took about 80 hours to design and draw on graph paper, normally would take about eight weeks to finish.

As Sawaya works, people often stop by to admire the boat and chat.

"So, if the RV show comes along and says they want an RV?" asks spectator Gene Schnell.

"I'm there," Sawaya replies.

"Great. Boeing hasn't talked to you yet, have they? Or Airbus?"

"Nope. But I'll be in Seattle a few more days."

Another man surveys the boat and says: "Not too bad -- you can be a kid forever. If I bring my grandson down here, he's going to go crazy."

But the question Sawaya hears all the time is: "Will it float?"

It probably would, if it were glued together. But, the 10-day turnover is too short to individually glue all of the pieces. So, this baby, she won't be seaworthy.

But Campbell said he may have the boat taken apart, then shipped to other boat shows around the country.

They could then hire Sawaya to put it back together.

Deja boat.

FUN FACTS ABOUT NATHAN SAWAYA AND LEGOS

Fuel for sculpting: Twizzlers and chai
Other creations: 7-foot long Brooklyn Bridge, Han Solo frozen in Carbonite, a large sized Monopoly board game cover
His groove: Sawaya likes to work to a customized "pep" mix on his iPod, which has about 3,000 tunes
Tools of the trade: A mallet (to get a snug fit) and a chisel (to pry off bricks) and a Lego separator (another prying tool)
Hardest thing about sculpting with Legos: Making round and curved shapes out of rectangular bricks
Other artistic media: Candy. Sawaya has done a heart from Necco Sweethearts Conversation Hearts and is currently working on a cowboy made of Jolly Rogers
Unfinished business: Sawaya still hasn't been to the original Legoland in Billund, Denmark
Lego fact: The fourth largest toy manufacturer in sales, Lego was founded in 1932
Web site: www.brickartist.com