Many Easy Pieces

Following your dream isn't always child's play. Just ask Nathan Sawaya. Two years ago, Sawaya, then 31, found himself at the Seattle Boat Show. Having recently quit his $150,000 job as a Wall Street lawyer, he was now scrambling to build a 10-foot model of a speedboat—entirely out of Legos, and in only 10 days. His first thought: no problem. But after the second day, Sawaya recalls, "it hit me: I'm not going to pull this off." So he stopped sleeping, then showering, then eating. Eight 18-hour days later, he snapped the last brick (number 250,000 or so) into place. "I was a zombie," he says.

Such is life for a freelance Lego artist. Since 1961, 178 of the best Lego bricklayers have won gigs as official designers and artisans at Lego workshops and theme parks around the world. There are roughly 40 of these "Master Builders" currently on staff, and for a time it looked as if Sawaya would join them. He won Lego's 2003-04 national Master Builder search by assembling, among other things, a 2,000-brick astronaut bunny (in 45 minutes), and a Thanksgiving turkey on the "Today" show. His prize: a job at Legoland California, where he spent much of 2004 repairing pre-existing Lego sculptures.

Yet Sawaya grew restless. He didn't mind the $13-an-hour salary as much as the lack of creative control. "I was getting so many outside requests, and when you work for Lego, you have to say no," he says. So he went back to Manhattan to start out on his own. Today he's one of only five independent craftspeople worldwide certified by Lego.

The secret of his success? A lifetime of practice. On Christmas 1978, the 5-year-old Sawaya unwrapped his first set of Legos. Before long, he'd built a bustling, 32-square-foot "Lego City" behind his parents' living-room couch, and a full-size "indoor dog" soon followed. When Sawaya left home for New York University, where he'd go on to study law, he hid his bricks under the bed. But he never quite let go of Lego. He'd stare out the window during lectures, diagramming buildings, and once rebuilt Greenwich Village on his dorm-room desk. Later, a girlfriend asked about the big boxes arriving at his apartment. Blushing, Sawaya confessed: Legos, all of them. "I really do see the world in little squares," he says.

It's paid off. On a recent afternoon, Sawaya sat in his studio—surrounded by 1.5 million bricks, stacked to the ceiling in clear bins—and did the math. Sawaya's simplest pieces tend to be commissions for collectors; a polar bear goes for $1,750. There are trade-show projects and work for publications (like the cash register for NEWSWEEK on page E1). He's also built massive monuments for the New Orleans Public Library (a post-Katrina tribute) and the Marine Corps museum (a 3-D Lego version of the iconic Iwo Jima photo). And this month, Sawaya's "The Art of the Brick"— featuring sculptures priced at about $10,000— opens at the Lancaster (Pa.) Museum of Art. Sawaya says earning a Lego living was "tough at first," but he now makes about what he did in law practice. And there are no billable hours.

© 2007