Well, it looks like I accidentally deleted my website. I though I learned to keep good backups 20 years ago, but I don’t have one. :-/
Ya… This is going to be a winter project. Apologies for the lack of content. A few posts have been restored below. Some pages are also back up.
On March 5th 2005 I did my first ever birthday party. While I didn’t have the name Brickworkshop, or the website, I had built dozens of collaborative public displays and viewers often asked about bringing the magic of those displays home. March 5th marked my first solo venture into professional work with my bricks. Did I take any pictures? no! But it was a city theme party (other themes came later) and this picture from the same era has a similar look.
And 20 year later, my red brick apartment building is still the tallest building in my traveling LEGO town, based on the height restrictions of plastic totes. 🙂
If you are anywhere near Cloverdale, go check out the LEGO exhibit at the Museum of Surrey! (Oct 2023 to Mar 2024)
The Museum is currently home to a fantastic LEGO exhibit. About 35 members of the VLC.ca (adult club) contributed different aspects to bring it all together, with amazing curation and tech support from the Museum staff.
The exhibit is a brief history of LEGO and mainly a celebration of the classic era, 1978 to the mid 90s.
During these years, LEGO introduced the “Minifigure” that we all know and love, and launched the first “themes”, such as Space and Castle. The era sort of ended when LEGO hit financial troubles and really ended in 1999 when they bounced back from the edge of Bankruptcy with the new Star Wars theme and started gearing most of the sets toward licensed pop culture content.
My contributions were mostly in Castle theme, where I did a lot of landscaping, foliage and story telling with figures.
Missed the show? Check out this virtual walk through.
Take a break from your bricks and go play outside!
For content related to my Archery Games/Battles, take a detour away from the LEGO content. Until I decide to create a dedicated website for my archery games, the content is here.
Sorry for the break in LEGO related content… 😉
I built this Tornado for the upcoming Worlds of Wonder exhibit at The Museum of Surrey. One of the themes in Wonders of the Natural World, including Tornadoes. A few VLC members remembered my whirlpool and figures I was the right person for this build. True! I like big moving builds. And while similar, I think this was harder, because I didn’t have a custom table supporting the top edge. Anyway, here goes!
Update: The tornady ran 90 days, before finally breaking down on the second last day of the 3 month exhibit! And no big crash! Just a few broken technic bits in the carousel. And after some repairs it was ready to spin again at Fan Expo 2020 this past weekend, so I got a good video.
I recently created this small LEGO display for the City of Vancouver, to showcase dozens of aspects of green and sustainable development that the city is pursuing. Some examples include permeable paving, bioswales, and rooftop solar.
I designed and built the display in about 80 hours, over a two-month period in the fall. Credit for building the ‘Repair Cafe’ goes to Andrew Delbaere. Also, many thanks to Amanda and team from the Sustainability Group at CoV for their work on the concept and research.
The display is made of approximately 12,500 pieces, 100 custom stickers, and 30 LEGO minifigures.
The display is travelling with the Sustainability Group. If you see them at an event, the LEGO might be there too. Click here for photos.
I recently lit up a few buildings for an exhibit and I wanted to show how I did it. I’m not sure if I’m the first person to do this, but no one in my LUG had seen this done before. Click here for instructions.
A short stop-motion PSA regarding the upcoming referendum in BC.
I brainstormed this idea with my friend Dayla and she liked it. We worked on the 2009 campaign together and this felt like a great way to do something different, and hopefully meaningful. She took the lead as director while I pulled out bins of pieces and started building sets.
Election BC has an excellent, in-depth and non-partisan explanation of both questions in this referendum and the potential new systems. See my long rant in favour for more detailed thoughts. Or check out this Fact Check Site.
I had fun with the folks at Dear City Council this week. They asked for help creating LEGO versions of some candidates in this upcoming municipal election. I supplied the pieces and a little expertise, and they had fun creating politicians.
The build got some media attention and hopefully inspired some new voters, both young and old.
The entire team at the VLC (Vancouver’s Adult LEGO® Club) has been working tirelessly to build a transportation exhibit for the Museum of New Westminster called ‘People Gotta Move’.
Every giant LEGO display starts with a good foundation. Why cheat and use plywood you might ask? Well, in order to set up all the cars and mini figures, we had to be able to walk down the streets during set up.
And here is the same wooden table with a few layers of LEGO added.
I totally recommend checking this exhibit out. The Museum is a 2 minute walk away from the New West Skytrain Station; and entry is by donation.
