Nathan Sawaya is an Lego artist that builds three dimension Lego art, sculptures, and portraits. He is a Lego master-builder and is recognized by Lego Corporation as a "LEGO Certified Professional".

His work has been featured on museum tours titled "The Art of the Brick". Among his most popular work is "Blue" (a sculpture of a person putting himself together), "Red" (a sculpture of a person either rising out of or sinking into a pile of Lego bricks), and "Yellow" (a sculpture of a person pulling himself apart).

In the interview by Journeyman Pictures (video above), Nathan explains that the three sculpture represents birth, life, and death respectively. Nathan has another art piece where Blue, Red, and Yellow are standing with square, circle, and triangular heads.

In the last video, you see a time-lapsed film of him creating a Lego sculpture from start to finish.

Here in the next video, you see Nathan at work creating a cello.

You may wonder whether Nathan use glue on no glue in his work.   He does use glue; otherwise the works may not stay together over time.   However, than means that if he needs to redo part of a work he needs to a hammer and chisel to break part of it apart.

Nathan started working with Lego at the age of five when he first got his first Lego set for Christmas 1978.

Born in Washington United States and raised in Oregon, Nathan had been a corporate lawyer in New York city making a six figure salary.  After winning a Lego contest, a company offered him a job as Lego master-builder.  He said yes, left his lucrative lawyer position, and moved to San Diego to work with Lego at $13 a hour.  Nathan says "The worst day being an artist is still better than the best day being a lawyer."^[ref]  He now does freelance commissioned one-of-a-kind work.  Some commissioned work can be as much as $20,000 to $30,000 each.^[ref]   In fact he had been offered $20,000 for his sculpture "Blue".^[ref]

Nathan has appeared on many interviews and television features.

CBS interviewed him as seen in video on the right.

Stephen Colbert did a somewhat humorous interview linked here where Nathan presented a life-size sculpture of Colbert (which consists of 30,000 pieces and two and half weeks of work).

You can see more of Nathan's Lego art on his website gallery brickartist.com.

Some of his work includes Lego sculptures of tyrannosaurus rex model, Mount Rushmore replica, Iwo Jima statue, Han Solo frozen in carbonite, Brooklyn bridge, Statue of Liberty with Jedi light-saber, and more.

One of his biggest piece is a life-size speed boat where he spent 18 hours a day for nine straight days using a quarter of a million bricks.  He built this for a Seattle boat show for $30,000.^[ref]