This review by longtime Charlotte arts critic Lawrence Toppman was published by The Charlotte Ledger on August 4, 2026. You can find out more about The Charlotte Ledger’s commitment to smart local news and information and sign up for our newsletter for free here. Ledger subscribers can add the Toppman on the Arts newsletter on their “My Account” page.
Review: ‘Brick Masters Studio’ is a colorful, hands-on exhibit that celebrates the artistry and creativity of LEGOs
Brick Master Sean Kenney’s LEGO creations are on display at Discovery Place through Sept. 7. (Photo courtesy of Discovery Place)
by Lawrence Toppman
I had to leggo my ego to appreciate the LEGO exhibit exploding across part of the second floor of Discovery Place. The science museum bills “Brick Masters Studio” as an immersive experience, one where you can marvel at Sean Kenney’s elaborate LEGO creations while assembling your own.
I’m more of a break master, someone likelier to devastate a sculpture than fabricate one. So this became an eyes-on experience for me, rather than eyes-and-hands-on. It’s rewarding simply as a stroll through a beautiful universe, though kids and adults noisily using their fingers as well as their vision reach an extra level of pleasure.
Kenney, who turns 50 this August but retains the spirit of a guy half his age, serves as a genial video host at multiple points on the journey, discussing the three themes of the exhibit — shape, color and structure — and giving away secrets to his mastery: How to strengthen the internal skeleton of your work, how to make flat LEGO pieces appear to curve when imitating a round object, how to create the illusion of depth in water by overlaying bricks of different colors with transparent ones.
Yet maybe “secrets” is the wrong word. Kenney works with standard sizes of LEGO studded bricks, studded plates (half the thickness of bricks) and flat tiles (plates without studs). He uses the 20 to 40 standard colors LEGO makes available to any purchaser. And he implies that, given enough patience, practice, engineering knowhow and creativity, anyone could do what he does. That might be easier to credit if we saw his first clumsy attempts — say, a misshapen 50-brick giraffe — but almost everything here is the work of a veteran at the top of his game.
The museum asks three things of visitors: Don’t touch Kenney’s one-of-a-kind pieces, don’t take away LEGO blocks after playi—er, building with them, and stay together in your group. (That’s museum-speak for “Parents, don’t let kids roam unattended.”)
The first opportunity to make something comes soon after you step into the exhibit. Because Kenney first draws every work as a flat two-dimensional image, you’re asked to freehand a squirrel on an electronic sketch pad. If yours looks like it lost a battle with an 18-wheeler, as mine did, don’t bother moving to the 3-D table, where you replicate models of a LEGO hamburger, smiley face and unicorn under the pressure of a two-minute timer.
Just wander happily among the red-orange Chinese dragon with the pink tongue; the birdbath with its cardinals, bumblebees and a timid squirrel; the seven-foot rose with unfurled petals we can’t fully see from below; and the Rainbow Faces mosaics, grinning children who come into focus as you step back from them. Here’s where Kenney is most like a painter, a LEGO Seurat working as a pointillist with little bricks.
You can add to an ongoing mosaic of a large face visitors are slowly creating; when I passed by, she had a grin made of orange, brown, white, gray, red and blue. Nearby, you experiment with colors to see how the same crimson or green blocks “change” when placed among other hues.
Creator Sean Kenney uses the duckling huddled under the duck as a way to support the larger structure. (Photo by Lawrence Toppman for The Charlotte Ledger)
Check out text placards found under the sculptures, which often tell how many LEGOs were needed, how long they took to assemble, and how Kenney “cheated” when he had to: A scale-model snow leopard, its whiskers borrowed from a LEGO Space Set, was too big to fit in a truck for transport, so he made the cheeks removable. These texts share design tips, too: That duckling huddled under its protective dad is actually helping to hold up the broad-chested adult.
The construction figures are daunting to beginners: A chameleon extending its curled tongue took 511 hours and 49,034 bricks to build. Sometimes, as with the scale-model version of a Chicago Cubs game at Wrigley Stadium, Kenney doesn’t bother to tell you how hard he worked. (He does tell you to look for Darth Vader and the Simpsons among the minuscule attendees.)
You end up at a fully constructed LEGO city under a tree supporting a sprawling white cloud. There you can tinker endlessly among thousands of bricks and tiles, until someone else comes along and reworks them in an endless cycle of creation, revision and destruction.
There, a Kenney video leaves you with the most important wisdom of all: Engineering and math skills get you only halfway to being a Brick Master; creativity, knowing why you’re building what you’re building, matters just as much. A STEM approach produces works that hold up, but a STEAM approach yields works that dazzle.
P.S. Don’t miss Kenney’s version of a roseate skimmer dragonfly near the museum’s first-floor entrance. It’s 250 pounds of LEGO bricks and welded metal, replicating the four wings this insect beats independently up to 30 times a second. Gorgeous.
IF YOU’RE GOING
“Brick Masters Studio” runs through Sept. 7 at Discovery Place, 220 W. Sixth St. The museum is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday-Thursday, 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Friday-Saturday.
Lawrence Toppman covered the arts for 40 years at The Charlotte Observer before retiring in 2020. Now, he’s back in the critic’s chair for the Charlotte Ledger — look for his reviews several times each month in the Charlotte Ledger.
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