Our Church, The Open Door, hosts a stations of the cross art exhibit every year, and this year I volunteered to create a piece out of LEGO bricks.  I definitely hesitated until the last minute to speak up, but it’s something I’ve wanted to do for a couple years now, just never had the courage or ambition to take it on.  The station that was open was Jesus being denied by Peter.  I pulled up the related verses, Matthew 26:31-35 -

Jesus Predicts Peter’s Denial

³¹ Then Jesus told them, “This very night you will all fall away on account of me, for it is written:

“‘I will strike the shepherd,
and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’^[a]

³² But after I have risen, I will go ahead of you into Galilee.”

³³ Peter replied, “Even if all fall away on account of you, I never will.”

³⁴ “Truly I tell you,” Jesus answered, “this very night, before the rooster crows, you will disown me three times.”

³⁵ But Peter declared, “Even if I have to die with you, I will never disown you.” And all the other disciples said the same.

Once I read that, I had a clear vision of the rooster in my mind.  I knew I couldn’t just sculpt a rooster and call it meaningful though.  I wanted the text “I will never disown you” incorporated in it somewhere.  Over the next few days I stirred up ideas of what to do with the text.  I had toyed with the idea of creating something like a 3 sided platform for the rooster, and on the 3 sides would be three different quotes of peter denying he knew Jesus, but the quotes would be too long to fit, and triangles are harder than anything in LEGO bricks.  I settled on a wall around the rooster.

I set off developing the head of the rooster first.  As luck would have it, I didn’t have to buy a single piece for this project!  That’s a first.  I had just bought 9 of the same Toy Story Pizza Planet Truck Rescue set for a class I taught that had the red bionicle 1×3 tooth that I had thought would prove to be useless in the future, but actually was PERFECT for the rooster’s crown!  The first time around on the rooster didn’t work out well for structural integrity reasons, so I scrapped that design mid way and started from scratch with a strict enforcement of adhering to ratios and spacing.  Simple is structurally sound I kept telling myself.

All told, it probably took 15 hours of work.  As far as pieces, there’s about 4,000 with all the bricks in the wall, all the technic connectors, and then all the plates for the rooster.  It’s 20″ wide, by 20″ long, and about another 20 some inches tall.

Honestly, this was one of the most rewarding, but also easy builds I’ve done to date.  Sure, there are a bunch of things I’d change, like trying to fill in all the holes in the exterior of the rooster, but some people said they really enjoyed seeing into it to appreciate the engineering work and how it all went together.  I was really nervous about 2 things before the exhibit.  First, I wondered how a LEGO work would be received by the community.  It’s not the oil on canvas or interactive piece that, I think, has become the norm.  Second, I worried about it being destroyed.  I had a 27 year old friend come over to my house, and when I showed him it, he immediately touched it and broke a piece off.  The same was done (and more so expected) when I showed it to my 2 nephews under 5.  I just envisioned people touching the piece throughout the day and rendering it a pile of indiscernible plastic, just waiting for me to come back and put it back together.  Not only did it hold up throughout the entire show, but they even moved it across the room from where I had set it up!  Brave souls who did that deed!  I had put effort in for originally planning to have the rooster balance solely on his 2 feet, which were purposely not rigid to display the horizontal details between bricks, but I decided against it in case someone decided to push it over.  Not to mention the uneven floor of the gallery space.

Here’s the “artistic statement” that went along with the sculpture:

Jesus had many supporters when he walked the earth, but he had to die on the cross alone.  I can only imagine what Jesus must have felt hearing Peter’s words but knowing full well that Peter would still disown him.  Christ not only forgives us when we fall short, but loves us without pause.  Even when his own disciples fall short after being in direct contact with Jesus, Christ still suffers and sacrifices for us;  God’s children.

Even though our words can build up confidence and pass off as strong wall against denial of our faith, our walls can still be shattered with just the slightest adverse push or pull; much like this delicate piece in front of you.

On that Good Friday, the rooster was pictured on the home page of the Post-Gazette, with a link to this story – http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/local/region/stations-of-the-cross-artists-create-their-own-interpretations-at-union-project-630228/

I can’t take all the credit for the work involved in this one.  There are 9 32 x 32 stud plates (which makes this 30 inches by 30 inches!) that I divvied up to the 9 kids in my class this year.  I used software to break a standard image down to 96 x 96 pixels.  Each pixel then corresponds to 1 lego stud, of which there are 9,216.  I then took an output of colors in each of the 96 rows and imported them into Excel, where I could manipulate cell sizes to match up to 32 x 32 cells per sheet.  Each student just had a print off to work from and mark which studs they filled.  The print outs were just black and white, so they had no idea what they were making.  I really liked the concept of using excel as instructions to make large scale mosaics, so I’ll definitely keep that in my bag of tricks for future works.

There are about 5,000 pieces in the mosaic.  The kids had no idea what they were building collectively until the center plate was done and put next to 2 other finished plates.  I did end up having to throw in a bit of time since 2 kids missed class and I wanted to make sure they would be able to finish it in the last class.  Total labor hours is somewhere in the 20+ hour range.

click on the images for larger views. 

It’s a pretty rude expression of a mack truck.  I struggle with actually putting in the effort to scale things properly or work on replication from a model.  I just said, “I want to build a mack truck” and started at it.  I mean, yeah, you get the idea that it’s a mack truck, but it also kind of looks like a tractor.  Whatever, it only took a few hours.  I wanted something I built on my own to show the kids in the class I teach.

The steering wheel turns the front wheels.  The doors open.  The 2 long grey cylinders are actually old school battery packs that power 2 electric motors rigged up with gears to the back 2 axles of the truck, so when you power them both on, it moves!

The wise man built his house upon the plastic brick, apparently.  It claims to be the world’s largest, most comprehensive illustrated Bible.  Tons of LEGO inspired recreations of Bible stories.

http://www.thebricktestament.com/

Here are some quick Christmas ornaments I made this year.  Nothing too fancy, but simple enough for anyone to make.

Merry Christmas!

Still doesn’t quite feel like Christmas without cold temperatures and some snow or frost.  I think there are less public decorations than normal too.  I haven’t noticed many street lamp signs or flags or trees or lights.  Maybe I just need to get out more.

I got to sleep a bunch today.  I woke up in a good mood and ready to face the day.  Got a lot of smaller things crossed off my to-do list.

I headed down to J’aime’s for dinner with the local fam and Uncle Jay and Aunt Leslie too.  I didn’t get to see them too much because I was building a nice LEGO car with David.  He’s getting the hang of putting a set together, but he needs some help here and there.  I also watched Dan play video games for a bit, but he’s not very good and I don’t get a turn.  It’s kind of like a symbiotic relationship though, I get to watch and yell at him, and he gets to play and take the verbal abuse.  I think it works for us.

Kallie comes back late Tuesday, so hopefully I’ll be able to meet up with Uncle Jay and Aunt Leslie again when she’s back.  I’m off work Thursday and Friday, so we should have some time to spend together too.

I’m off work tomorrow, hopfully the home depot employees are not.  I’d like to get some painting done before Kallie gets here.  I hoping to get that done tomorrow, and then reserve Tuesday night after work to cleaning up this disaster area the house is right now.

I’m being super proactive and structured while Kallie is out in California for a week.  My default has been to do nothing, get mopey and grumpy, and sleep a lot.  I’m going to try to have a very productive and also entertaining week while I’m by myself.  The reality of this probably being one of the last weeks on my own for a very long time is certainly in the air.  I’ve had many people warn me to get any projects done around the house, because once the baby comes, you have no time for anything.  Here’s a recap of Day 1:

5:45am – Wake up to drop Kallie off at the airport

7:00am – Arrive back home, take a nap before work

9:30am – Wake up and realize you should already be at work.  Oops.

5:00pm – Come home, watch the movie ” The Number 23” – A quick review:  This has so many qualities of the psychological thrillers I love.  I am so inspired to write stories after watching this movie.  I identified with the character so much, and having the premise of the movie being the main character identifying with a “fictional” character in a book just drew me in further and deeper.  No way Kallie would have enjoyed that one.

7:00pm – Do the dishes, tidy up a bit.

8:00pm – Build the LEGO Ferrari Racer – My mother in law is basically my LEGO supplier, and she’s usually good for awesome bulk collections, but this collection had the book and pretty much all the pieces to this amazing set, so I put it together.  It’s so awesome.  It’s hard to tell the size from the picture, but it’s a hefty foot long.  It looks and feels just like a model.  I think I’ll even leave it together for a bit.

9:00pm – Sort the rest of the LEGO bricks I got for Christmas while watching the SNL Christmas special.

11:00pm – Do some pushups, write some emails, surf around a bit, quick devotional, bed by midnight!

Look for a daily log for the week while Kallie is gone, hopefully to keep me honest and motivated by fear of man…or something.

This was part of a challenge this year to make something homemade for 5 people.  Adam’s always been a big Who fan.  Probably took 3 hours to design, build, and then glue.

I once set out to create a model of Pittsburgh out of bricks.  It didn’t turn out well.  Scale is a hard thing to maintain when constricted to the shapes of LEGO bricks.  So, the mini-series was born.  As I’m inspired, or as requested, I’ll set out to recreate individual buildings and landmarks.  Here’s what I got so far:

The Civic Arena:

The US Steel Tower:

The Cathedral of Learning:

I’ll probably set out to create a “larger scale” version of the cathedral of learning, but I just couldn’t resist this one.

I’ve had Ego Leonard in the hopper to blog about for a while now, but it seems current news has beaten me to the punch!  Turns out, one of his extra large 8 foot tall LEGO sculptures has “washed up” on a Florida beach.  How appropriate, seeing as LEGO opened up another Legoland theme park in Orlando!  Funny thing is, by the looks of the NYPost article, they have no idea whose it is, but I do!!

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/mysterious_giant_lego_man_washes_Yjgp65IsyMtwG9pTlbTtWO#ixzz1c701z3vK