Lego has been inspiring children to use their imaginations and channel their inner sculptors for generations. The little plastic building blocks have played a big part in the lives of so many of us, and the company keeps innovating and developing news sets and models all the time.
Not only kids, but adults like artist Nathan Sawaya have been inspired to create with Legos. You’ve probably seen a few of Nathan’s Lego sculptures on the web, TV or, in person if you’ve been fortunate enough to have checked out his “Art of the Brick” exhibit in New York. Nathan is a full-time Lego sculptor and has sculpted Lego creations of celebrities like Conan O’Brien to world famous monuments like the Taj Mahal and the New York Public Library Lions. His life-size human sculptures sometimes take him 2-3 weeks to finish and can incorporate as many as 25,000 bricks.
Most of us might not have the talent or discipline to create abstract works of art like Nathan’s, but it’s about discovering one’s own creativity that has the company pumping out 20 billion Lego bricks each year. Here are some facts you might not know about Lego and some of Nathan Sawaya’s coolest creations.
On average there are 62 Lego bricks for every person on earth.
Approximately 440 billion Lego elements have been manufactured since 1949.
Laid end to end, the number of Lego bricks sold in a year would reach more than five times round the world.
A professor of mathematics calculated that there are over 915 million ways to combine six Lego bricks.
