CNN Says - "Must See. One Of The Top Ten Exhibits In The World"

When it comes to the world of art, London is arguably the finest city in the world. Crammed to the rafters with breathtaking museums and galleries, it's more a case of deciding what not to rather than what to see. Best of all, the majority of these priceless art houses are FREE to enter, a lesson that governments and cities all over the world could take on board. So with a veritable smorgasbord to choose from (The Tate, Tate Modern, National, British Museum, Science Museum etc etc) it was obvious which one the LegsyBoys should go to......the Old Truman Brewery in Brick Lane to see THE ART OF THE BRICK!

Nathan Sawaya is a former lawyer from New York who now makes a career out of Lego sculptures. In Sawaya's words: "Most people don't have a block of marble at home, but I hope that today, they'll feel sufficiently inspired to take a few LEGO bricks and get off the beaten path"...bravo!

 That may sound unusual but I once knew a lawyer who was so obsessed with playing computer games in the office he developed nintendo thumb, so I guess it's not that odd! What this man can do with the humble 'brick' really has to be seen to be believed.

He has recreated major works of art, some simplistically and others in a highly pixelated way that is simply awesome.

Squint your eyes - amazing, huh.

They range from a couple of hundred pieces to an extraordinary dinosaur made from over 80,000 pieces!!! In all, there are over 100 pieces and more than 1 million bricks used - extraordinary really.

Klimt Kiss (18,893 pieces)

Over 2 metres tall.

Solar System (9,989 pieces)

A photo just doesn't this justice

Peace Sign - made up with every colour of the rainbow

T-Rex (80,029 pieces!!!)

 Is it art? Well, that's for you to judge, but given the exhibition is thought provoking, highly original and has the capacity to challenge the traditional boundaries of what is art, then why not.

The Box (950 pieces) - what's in it?

Sing (8,189 pieces)

Stairway (4,750 pieces) - built from donated spare pieces

After all, who said a sculpture has to be made from plaster of Paris or metal? And here's a really groovy thing - after you've finished looking, you can jump into the play area and make your own Lego creations, either with the real thing or using a computer.....how cool is that!

But wait, there's more.............Liam has been a very buzzy boy lately and over the course of several weeks has built three mega LEGO kits (supposedly with a 14-16 age recommendation). He's a little LEGO gun, and here's the fruits of his handywork, completely without assistance.......

Slowly....

.....slowly....

....slowly....

Bingo - a Sopwith Camel

Big Trucker

R2D2

THE BIG ROCKS TO THE WEST

Since settling in London, the kids have become involved in weekend sporting activities on both Saturday and Sunday mornings (which is terrific), the upshot being we aren't getting the opportunity to explore as much as we'd like. BUT, here's the cool bit - in the UK you are NEVER more than 113 km away from the sea, which fundamentally means nothing is too far away. And so last Saturday we piled into our trusty new steed Concord at 1:30 pm and headed west. Ninety minutes later we were in the visitor centre car park at STONEHENGE!

How groovy is that, and along the way we passed signs pointing to historic locations such as Southampton, Salisbury, Windsor and Winchester, and not to forget Legoland as well; everything is so close.

The Heel Stone

 I don't mind telling you it was bitterly cold (presuming you think 1C in mid-afternoon is cold), but it was worth it to show the kids the famous temple ruins that date back 4,500 years, construction spanning from the Neolithic to Bronze Age.

The Slaughter Stone in the foreground - but how do archaeologists know??

So much of Stonehenge still remains a mystery and let's face it, always will. For instance, the bluestone rocks were transported (somehow) from west Wales and the huge sarsen stones from north Wiltshire - why, how, who knows.

Is this how they transported the 'rocks'?

How did they erect it? How did they manage to lay the lintel stones perfectly horizontal on the trilithons....simply amazing.

Horizontal lintel stones

Trilithons

One thing that is known is that approximately 1/3 of each vertical stone is buried in the ground and the tallest great trilithon pillar stands 7 metres above ground. Did I say 'amazing' already?

Standing silently on the Salisbury plains, this ancient temple is an inspiring sight that even drew admiration from the children - now that's a vote of confidence. Stonehenge is one of those rare sights that offers up many more questions than it provides answers, truly fascinating.We nipped into the nearby village of Amesbury and found a little 'wet' pub (i.e. it didn't serve food) where we thawed ourselves in front of a raging fire and with a glass of Spain's finest vino blanco, and then pointed Concord home to Ealing. and we were back by 8:00pm........how good is that!

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