Toronto artist’s work too good to Lego

Etti Bali: News Editor

An artist is giving a wooden pole outside a café on Harbord Street an artistic makeover using Lego toy pieces.

Martin Reis is a trained photographer and artist. Born in Germany, Reis immigrated to Canada at the age of 13. Now 60, he’s creating tangible and performance artworks in the city. It is his way of creating community spaces. Reis has named this pole near Clinton Street the Tour de Lego, or Lego Tower.

“It’s like the Tour Eiffel, the French tower. I always like to bring in a bit of French culture in English Canada. My father is French, my mom’s German,” he said.

“I actually do a fair bit of that in my other work as a performance artist.

“I deliver telegrams in French. It sounds more fun this way. If I call it like Lego Tower, that’s a little boring,” Reis said.

What started with just four to five layers on Jan. 3 has grown into a tower of more than seven feet, exhibiting over 4,000 to 5,000 pieces. He has spent more than $200 buying Lego pieces, while some are donations.

He worked with different materials like leaves and telegrams, but he chose Lego toys for this instal- lation as they appeal on various levels, he said.

“Lego was one of the first things I did when I worked with other street artists. I’ve always been inspired by other artists around the world who use Lego in public settings,” Reis said. “For this one, given how many schools there are in the neighbourhood and how many kids enjoy it, I thought Lego would be the perfect choice.”

Working towards building com- munity art, he said Lego provided him with the sustainability needed to survive outdoors.

“Lego is great because it’s universal. You don’t have to worry about the environment doing anything to it,” Reis said. “It’s colourful. It’s joyful. It’s just a perfect community art material.”

He is happier putting pieces out there for people to interact with and holds no illusions as to whose art it is.

“It’s all about bringing ideas out there and then letting other people take over. I don’t have any ownership over this piece,” Reis said. “Once I put it out in the community, it’s the community’s piece.

“It doesn’t need to be all my work. It needs to be a collaboration, a conversation between the city and myself,” he said.

For him, art is ageless. He said toddlers to 80-year-olds added pieces to the tower.

“Every child is born an artist,” said Reis, a former freelance photographer with Now magazine for 10 years and has also been documenting street art.

He said he doesn’t have the permit to do it, and even though no one has complained about the Lego Tower, he’s worried somebody would and the city would take it away,

“I am a little nervous that somebody will complain. I don’t have a permit to do this. When I think of a permit, I think of children,” Reis said.

“The children are my permit. Because it makes them happy.”

His past works include The Trees Have Spoken, an art installation created in December 2023 using fallen leaves at the Western Island of Ontario Place.

Reis played the role of a soccer referee handing out red cards to traffic rule violators in a performance art piece in July 2023. The art promoted pedestrian safety at intersections like Bathurst and Richmond Streets.

He now works for a music ensemble called Tafelmusik and hopes he can take up creating art full-time.

“I run music concerts to pay the bills, but maybe one day I can do this professionally all the time,” he said.