Sean Kenney: Connecting Animals with Bricks Fraser Ratzlaff’s

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Sean Kenney at the Denver Zoo with some friends.

Sean Kenney: Connecting Animals with Bricks

I’ve been creating nature-themed art with LEGO bricks for about ten years. In that time, I’ve created hundreds of sculptures, collectively built with over three million LEGO bricks, which have been put on exhibition and have visited nearly 100 botanical gardens, arboretums, zoos, science centers, and museums across the United States, Canada, Europe, and Asia. I enjoy exploring the interconnections found in the natural world. LEGO bricks are a nice metaphor for this: just as LEGO pieces interconnect, everything in nature is interconnected in a delicate balance. Insects and plants have important relationships; different species of animals have symbiotic, mutualistic, or predatory relationships with each other; and animals have connections with their families just like we do. All of this is important because we humans have a connection with nature, too. Even in our urban and modern lives, we occupy land, we’re part of the food chain, we feed plants every time we exhale; we are a part of nature and nature is a part of us.

Panda bears having fun!

Penguins in progress.

Mother Polar Bear and Family. When I create sculptures of animals with LEGO bricks, I want them to have a spark of life; to feel alive, like they have some magic to them. I’m never content to just “make a thing”; it has to be special somehow. If someone says “make a penguin,” I ask myself first: okay, why? What is the penguin doing? What do penguins do, actually? How do they interact? What do they interact with? I look at photos and videos online, and start to think about how I, myself, can relate to that creature, or how I can try to capture some part of that creature’s life and show it to my audience.

And more than anything else, I need to have some kind of personal connection to the subject matter. That can often be challenging; how can I relate to a leopard? But in doing my research about each sculpture, I find something that I can sync with, and then use that as the focus of the piece. For example, my sculpture “Mother Polar Bear and Cubs” is a life-size sculpture of a mother with three cubs climbing on and cuddling around her. Watching videos of polar bears with their cubs, I was taken by how almost-human they seemed, and as a parent of young children, I saw myself and my kids reflected back at me... I wanted to try to capture this aspect of their lives. In doing this, I put my imprint onto the sculpture, and hopefully it then becomes more than just a stack of bricks pushed together the right way. It has an energy to it. By humanizing the bear a little, it can feel a little more relatable and familiar to audiences. And by doing this, maybe viewers can relate to them a bit more.

Sean working on a penguin chick at his studio.

Polar bear cubs.

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Fraser Ratzlaff’s Archelon Castle

Article and Photography by Fraser Ratzlaff

After a two-year break from building because our daughter was born, I began to plan my next big build. I wanted to incorporate a lot of movement. I liked the idea of doing something big for BrickCon that moved on a turntable, and looked great from every angle. I also wanted to keep re-inventing the Castle theme.

A lot of castle form and function is about defense, and I became captivated by this idea of a castle built on the back of a giant prehistoric sea turtle. What moat could be bigger than the ocean? What defense is better than obscurity? The castle is never in the same place twice. How can you attack if you don’t know it exists or can’t find it? Archelon is the name of the largest species of sea turtle ever discovered. In my story, this is the last one. It never dives below the surface, slowly roaming the ocean—letting the sun warm it, and eating mostly what swims into its mouth. The turtle isn’t even really aware there’s a castle on its back.

It was fun to develop the story. The build was so big and challenging, from the beginning I wasn’t even sure it would work. The hardest parts were creating a large organic shape, getting the fins to move, designing a turntable to handle the weight, and the sheer scale of the project. It was really hard, but so much fun, and it really pushed me to grow as a builder in many ways. Hope you like it!

Here’s the story: A very long time ago, a huge storm shipwrecked a giant ship. Only two souls survived, and were able to piece together a makeshift raft from the wreckage, before everything sank below the waves. After weeks floating aimlessly at sea with no sight of land or ship, and out of water and supplies, they thought they were doomed for sure. And then, all of a sudden, they spotted a tiny island on the horizon, and they were drifting towards it! As they got closer they realized it wasn’t an island at all, but actually the back of an enormous sea turtle. With their raft failing, they scrambled up on to the shell of the turtle, thinking they were saved for the moment, but as soon as the turtle dove below the surface, all hope would be lost. But the turtle never did.

After the two shipwreck survivors were living on the sea turtle for awhile, a few other people lost at sea found their way to the ‘floating island’, and a tiny community began to form—almost a little refugee camp on the ocean, everyone contributing in their own way to help the group. Then one day the turtle swam into a big cove with a small entrance and stayed awhile. The people living on the turtle decided they liked life at sea and agreed to build a permanent home together. They used their small rafts and boats to ferry stone from a natural quarry over to the turtle to build a castle. After awhile, the turtle swam out of the cove and back into the open ocean.

Archelon Castle is a community of 25 people who live and work together on the ‘floating island.’ They do meet other people occasionally, almost always from ships passing by who want to trade, need help, or are simply in disbelief at what they are seeing, but these interactions and meetings are actually fairly rare, simply due to how vast the ocean is. Even more rare is finding someone who is shipwrecked and in need of rescue, although it does happen. They join the community for awhile and are always free to leave when the next ship passes by, as is anyone. But the people who call Archelon home tend to stay, and any visitors tend to leave, no matter how fascinated they are, or how strong of a connection they make with the place or the people. And regardless of how deep their desire to go back, or how hard they look, they will never be able to find it again. Concept and story by Fraser Ratzlaff. Original drawings and watercolor by Andrea Krook.

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Loïc with one of his builds.

Builder Spotlight: Loïc Brun

Article by Joe Meno Photos by Loïc Brun

A western scene built by Loïc. Loïc Brun, known as filbrick or Les briquet de Loïc online, is a French product design student and LEGO builder. Since he was a child, he has been building, starting with secondhand bricks that his parents found at flea markets. Having the blue LEGO system 4153 box, he created small towns with a few figures. With a little imagination, he could bring his story to life. He received more sets on his birthday and at Christmas. Loïc ’s first Technic box seeded an interest in mechanics and technology in him. Loïc never stopped LEGO building, so he never had a Dark Age. He’s 22 and has been building for contests since he was 8. At the age of 14, he finished in fifth place (out of 75 participants) in a contest where his passion for building started. The following year’s contest theme was the Far West and he got first place with a chess scene between Jolly Jumper and Lucky Luke (from a famous comic book in Europe). Since that moment, he never stopped doing LEGO contests. He still does them now and joined a local LEGO users group: “Puissance Brick.” Childhood-related themes such as comics and cartoons are Loïc’s favorite themes. He also likes to convert these characters to 3D. With the LEGO themes, he really likes the Creator “3 in 1” sets which allow you to create several models. For him, this is the original spirit of the LEGO brand, to create various objects only with bricks and without figures. He finds that this is what allows his imagination to be conceptualized the best. The models may be simplistic, but with a few bricks one can build an airplane, a car, or a boat. This confirms how the bricks can be used universally. Loïc feels that this range is underestimated by the fans, which is sad since it is a great place to see the playability and creativity of building bricks.

Jumper and Lucky.