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Lego has given me the title "really unique customer," cause I buy hundreds of thousands of Lego every month.
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I used to practice corporate law in New York City: mergers, acquisitions, real exciting stuff.
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And I would come home after a long day at the law firm, and I would need some sort of outlet.
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And I would draw.
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I would paint.
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And sometimes I would sculpt.
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It was just one day I thought about this toy from my childhood, Lego bricks.
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Could I sculpt large-scale sculptures using this toy?
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And so I started experimenting.
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And I just dug out all the old bricks I had from when I was a kid.
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And just tried to replicate things I saw in my apartment.
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And I put together a website which became really my virtual gallery.
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People started contacting me and saying, "Hey,
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can you build me this?
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Can you build me that?"
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Actually when my website crashed from too many hits,
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that I realized "ah, there's something to this."
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And I decided to make that change.
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And I left the law firm behind to play with bricks full time.
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The reaction from friends and family was interesting.
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There was some people who were a little negative about it,
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and thought I was crazy.
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I didn't know how long it would last.
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I thought, maybe I'll be able to pay rent next month.
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But I don't know if I'll have a job after that.
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During those downtimes, when I didn't have something, didn't have a commission,
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that's when I would create art for myself.
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And that's really what "The Art of the Brick" became.
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This exhibition of art that I created on my own that now tours the globe.
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The time it takes to create a sculpture really depends on the size and complexity of the piece.
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So a life-size human form can take up to two to three weeks.
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Something smaller could be done maybe in a few days or a day.
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The longest I've ever worked on something is about three months,
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for a sculpture of a Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton that was about 20 feet long.
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Recently, I spent two months working on a Batmobile.
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The bricks I use in my art are the very same bricks that people can purchase at a toy store.
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I don't paint them.
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I don't have access to special colors or special shapes and sizes.
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And we're in my art studio today where I have over 5 million Lego bricks.
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When you look at my sculptures up close,
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you see all those sharp corners and right angles.
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And then you back away from it, and all those corners, they blend into curves.
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And that's kind of the magic of using Lego bricks.
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You know, you don't have to find one career path.
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There are many ways to get to where you wanna go.
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Even if you don't know where that is right now.
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You can always change what you are.
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NARRATOR: To see how close pro-snowboarder Mike Basich
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chases storms in his mobile, tiny home,
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watch this next video.
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MIKE BASICH: The view always changes,
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which has been really fun.
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You just pull up the side of road,
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all of a sudden you have lakefront property,
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international forest.
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Next one, you're on a little creek or out in the desert.
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The landscape's just amazing.
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It's like having real estate that's priceless.
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Everyone misses home at some level.
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You never get homesick with this.
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Thanks for watching.
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