Lego as an Artform

I took yesterday off (gasp!) and built a Lego fortress for my grandson. He has all sorts of prefab kits with robots, cars and reconstructions of his favorite TV shows. But once the model fell apart, he has no idea what to do with the loose bits.

Me? I'm a recovering Legoholic. The sound of pawing through the plastic bricks is as comforting as a crackling fire on a winter's day and stimulating as chocolate. As a kid, I built any and everything from Lego.

Lego c1960s

There were no kits modeled after popular movies and TV. We thought stuff up and designed it on the fly. Once a friend and I decided to use every piece that we'd collected on one giant creation. It took two long days to built a castle that filled a table top and rose two feet in the air complete with towers, drawbridge, moat, dragons and catapults. (We were both well over 30 yrs old at the time)

Getting together with a 12 year old nephew to play Legos many years ago I asked, "What should we build?" He instantly hauled out a handful of instruction book Lego projects from the Millennium Falcon to Pirates of the Caribbean.  "No no no. Let's make something up. You tell me what you want and we'll do it." My brother worried that his son preferred organized models and we should stick to the instructions. "That's no fun," I replied. They both looked dubious.

 

Over the next hour or so we built a glorious pirate ship with a high poop deck, three masts, cannon hatches with cannon at the ready, sailors on deck and trimmed to sail. She was fully 2 feet stem to stern and 3 high to the crows nest. Neither Liam nor his father could fathom how I got from a pile of bits and bobs to this amazing creation without any help.

Lego sets now

We often say that kids are losing their sense of imagination and creativity because video games and toys are giving them everything pre-made. I'm not sure that's the case, although I've bemoaned it myself at times. Creative kids will be creative, no matter what they start with. Prearranged models and games only make it easier for the others to enjoy the same stuff a bit more. 

For those of us on the weird track, all these special kits just give us a wider variety of shapes and pieces to invent from.