Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Arts | Westchester

A Legoland Builder Turns Her Childhood Hobby Into an Adult Art Form

Veronica Watson’s Lego version of Picasso’s “Guernica.”Credit...James Estrin/The New York Times

Pablo Picasso’s birthday was coming up and Veronica Watson wanted to celebrate. She was standing in her workshop at the Legoland Discovery Center in Yonkers last October, where she serves as the master model builder, and was scanning online through the artist’s paintings.

She settled on “Guernica,” since she thought the antiwar mural would look cool in Lego. She found a picture of the painting and, working from the upper left corner, began to recreate it — brick by brick.

“I’d do a little bit, walk away, come back, look at it, and then add to it,” Ms. Watson said.

Of all the jobs held by recent graduates of the Urban Design and Architecture Studies program at New York University, Ms. Watson, 23, most likely has the most unusual one. She cleans, repairs and maintains existing Lego structures and inspires visitors with her own fantastical creations. But her projects are more than children’s playthings — they are true works of art.

Picasso’s “Guernica” is a case in point. Within hours after she began her replica, her co-workers — some had called her crazy for taking it on — were amazed at the re-creation. Ms. Watson, a self-described kid at heart, shrugged off their astonishment, even if she felt a little giddy.

“When you see a bunch of Lego on a table, it wants to be put together in some way,” she said back in her workshop one Tuesday in May, this time building a character from a video game for a coming event. “I just looked at each shape in the painting and tried to capture the essence with Lego — a bull, a horse head.”

When Legoland Discovery Center’s social media manager posted a photo of the Lego Guernica version on Facebook and Twitter, it won wide acclaim. There were stories on a number of blogs and online news sites, and an art museum in Italy asked if it could put it on display. (She hung it in Legoland instead.)

Image
Ms. Watson in her office in Legoland Discovery Center with some of her retired works.Credit...James Estrin/The New York Times

Monique Perretti, Legoland Discovery Center’s marketing manager, said Ms. Watson is different from the master model builders she has worked with before. She is able to look at a picture of anything and render it in 3-D, even with the limitations of sharp-edged Lego bricks.

“We’re all fascinated with how her mind works,” Ms. Perretti said. When she recently told Ms. Watson they needed something Mets-themed for an upcoming baseball event, Ms. Watson had more ideas than time.

“She was immediately off making a pennant, a bat, a baseball, even Mr. Met himself,” Ms. Perretti said.

Chris Hernandez, one of the model builders Ms. Watson oversees, said that when he watches her build, she falls into a “trance mode” where she will zero in on something with extreme focus.

Mr. Hernandez once watched Ms. Watson construct a muscled King Kong in 20 minutes, just by staring at a picture. (The beast is now mounted on a miniature Empire State Building in a large-scale Lego display of New York City called MiniLand.)

If Ms. Watson runs into a problem, like needing to make rounded edges with squared bricks, she delights in solving it.

Image
Her lions of fashion including Anna Wintour, Grace Coddington, Karl Lagerfeld and Marc Jacobs.Credit...James Estrin/The New York Times

“It’s exciting to find a piece that’s meant for one thing but you use it for something else,” she said.

Just the other day, she was challenged with making another video game character’s long, spiky hair. Then she had an idea: She decided to use overturned small brown cones, which looked like wisps.

Ms. Watson’s office, a narrow galley probably meant to be a supply closet, is hardly a place to push papers. Here, a simple drafting table is surrounded by dozens of bins of basic Lego bricks organized by color and rows of tiny drawers holding itty-bitty hats, tubes and slopes, even little plastic teeth and wings.

A few papers are tucked into a desktop shelf made of green and yellow Lego bricks, there’s a photo of Oprah Winfrey accepting an Oscar made of Lego on the wall, and on the adjacent bookshelf are dozens of Ms. Watson’s now-retired Lego constructions: a gnome and an enormous Death Star, a detailed gingerbread house and figures from the television show “Game of Thrones.”

Ms. Watson has been particularly drawn to caricatures lately, making Spock and Captain Kirk for a “Star Trek” event. Inspired by New York’s Fashion Week in February, Ms. Watson spent a few hours constructing celebrities in the fashion world, like Anna Wintour and Grace Coddington, Marc Jacobs and Karl Lagerfeld.

“With Lego, you have a limited palette, so to make something you have to analyze it to its simplest form,” she said. “You ask, ‘What is the most important thing?’ So when someone looks at it, they recognize it and fill in the blank.”

Image
Lego Ned Stark from “Game of Thrones” sitting on the series’ Iron Throne.Credit...James Estrin/The New York Times

To make the blocky style icons recognizable, she put Mr. Jacobs in a kilt; Mr. Lagerfeld, with a white ponytail, in a black suit with his hands held tightly to his sides; and Ms. Wintour, sitting with crossed arms, in her trademark bob and sunglasses.

Some of Ms. Watson’s displays, like “Guernica” and the Fashion Week characters, are in glass cases in an area of Legoland Discovery Center called Cool Creations, the last stretch of hallway before visitors exit.

She checks on them often to make sure nothing is amiss, because she does not always glue her builds. Like a true Lego enthusiast, she believes that the pieces should be used again and again.

Said Ms. Watson: “I can’t tell you the number of parents that complain their child breaks every Lego set they’ve ever built. I tell them, ‘It’s O.K. That’s the fun thing about Lego.’ ” Ms. Watson’s parents — Tom Watson is a journalist, and Beryl Watson is a painter — encouraged their children to find a creative outlet, whether through drawing, painting or building. From the time she was little, Mr. Watson remembers hearing the familiar rattle of his daughter’s hands digging through bins of Lego bricks in the basement playroom.

“Veronica didn’t get a lot of girlie stuff when she was a kid — she got stuff that she could build with. That’s what she was interested in,” he said. Ms. Watson and her two younger brothers, who were raised in Mount Vernon, often took on big themed projects, like Harry Potter’s Hogwarts Castle, working on the projects for hours.

Other times, Ms. Watson would construct imaginative worlds with her own self-made characters. “She always liked the freedom to create that came along with Lego,” her father said.

Which seems to be why Ms. Watson loves her first job out of college: She is still that kid making cool stuff in the basement, only now with a much larger audience.

”Guernica” is on permanent display in the Cool Creations gallery at Legoland Discovery Center, One Ridge Hill Boulevard, Yonkers. Visitors can build alongside Veronica Watson at Adult Fans of Lego Night, on the first Thursday of every month (except this July). Hours are Sunday through Thursday, 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., last ticket sold at 5; Fridays and Saturdays, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m., last ticket sold at 7. Information: 866-243-0770; legolanddiscoverycenter.com/westchester.

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section WE, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: A Picasso of Lego Makes Art, Brick by Brick. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT