Dean West & Nathan Sawaya

Nathan Sawaya is an award-winning artist who creates awe-inspiring works of art out of some of the most unlikely things. His global touring exhibitions, THE ART OF THE BRICK, feature large-scale sculptures using only toy building blocks: LEGO bricks to be exact. His work is obsessively and painstakingly crafted and is both beautiful and playful.

Previously a NYC corporate lawyer, Sawaya is the first person to ever take LEGO into the art world and is the author of two best selling books. His unique exhibition is the first of its kind to focus exclusively on LEGO as an art medium and has broken attendance records around the globe. The creations, constructed from countless individual LEGO pieces, were built from standard bricks beginning as early as 2002.

Sawaya is the recipient of numerous awards and honors, recognizing his artwork and cultural achievements. In 2014, with the belief that "art is not optional," Sawaya founded The Art Revolution Foundation for the purpose of making art a priority in our schools and our homes. He is often a featured speaker at events, including Google Zeitgeist, TEDx, and at the Clinton Library.

A wide range of environments and character types are explored in the works of New York City-based Dean West. The Australian-born (1983) artist who studied at the Queensland College of Art, is best known for his intricate and highly staged photographs that take everyday occurrences beyond the realm of natural reality.

In 2015 West started working with themes based around memory, recreating moments, either from stories recounted to him by friends, or from his own memories, blurring the boundaries of fact and fiction to gloriously theatrical effect. West’s style is an unusual but utterly compelling method for constructing a photograph. The results are strangely cinematic — like day-to-day situations that have had the animation sucked out of them; oneiric, fantastical set-ups that echo with old school Americana.

Dedicated to the vast possibilities of digital photography as both a medium and a cultural epoch, West’s narratives draw inspiration from the total diversity offered by the visual arts. While the tableau photography of Stan Douglas and Jeff Wall inform West’s understanding of photography as a form of contemporary communication, the paintings of David Hockney and Edward Hopper provide evident aesthetic direction. The fictional world of cinema and the functional language of advertising have also clearly left their mark and taught lessons of their own.