Emperor penguins

Emperor penguins


As a parent of young children, I enjoy exploring parental relationships found in nature.  This is a life-size sculpture of an emperor penguin caring for its baby chick.   Creating these kinds of sculptures with a children’s  plaything is especially poignant and, in my opinion, helps make the sculptures even more meaningful.

I intentionally anthropomorphize my creatures (just a little) which pairs nicely with the cartoon-like look of the flat color of LEGO bricks.  Together with realistic posing and the subtle stepping of the LEGO bricks, this creates a really nice visual aesthetic that somehow keeps my sculptures both true-to-nature and yet impossibly digital.

If you’d like to see more of my Nature-themed sculptures, they are currently traveling on exhibition in several countries around the world!  Take a look at the exhibit schedule to see if a show is coming soon near you.

 

Building them

The sculpture uses over 18,000 LEGO pieces and took a month and a half of full time work to design and build at my studio in Amsterdam.  It’s supported by a custom-fabricated welded steel armature, and every brick is glued piece-by-piece into place as the sculpture is created.  Only standard off-the-shelf everyday LEGO pieces were used, without any custom shapes or colors, and each is connected properly the way LEGO bricks are meant to be used.

Sean Kenney is not affiliated with or employed by the LEGO Group of companies.
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