Another brick in the hall for Lego show
Lego enthusiasts have taken over Barber Hall, building everything from spaceships to breweries for the 2018 Palmerston North Brick Show. The weekend show raises money for the Youth One Stop Shop, which provides free health and social services for young people aged 10 to 24. Event spokesman Dylan Thomsen said last year’s show drew a crowd of 7000 people over the weekend, and he was confident this year’s all-new displays could beat that. ‘‘Everyone that comes in will find something different they love. We even have a Lego Tui Brewery.’’ Thomsen said each of the 40 displays had taken months of planning and building, such as the 43,000-brick Eye of Sauron that cast a baleful red eye across the hall yesterday. Exhibitors Brian Cook and Mike Halman have been building their scifi diorama for six months, spreading bricks throughout their flat. Cook said they were inspired by sci-fi artist Chris Foss, who’s best known for painting the cover images on classic sci-fi novels like Dune. The diorama features a large space station, surrounded by smaller Lego spaceships and one massive black, grey and yellow ship, about the size of an adult man’s torso. The massive ship was built in three sections, with intricate scenes on the inside, which, unfortunately, fell apart in transit, Cook said. ‘‘So we’ve had to improvise. We’re setting up the other ships like they’re attacking them, so now it’s battle damage – it’s a feature and not an accident.’’ Cook rediscovered his childhood passion for Lego when he was a managing director of a large health and safety consulting firm in Britain. ‘‘It was a very high-pressure job and I relaxed by building Lego with my kids.’’ The kids have grown up and have long left Lego behind, but Cook still finds it therapeutic. Devising and building complex Lego models was a form of meditation for him, Cook said. ‘‘It takes up your concentration and keeps you in the moment. You’re not worrying about what happened yesterday, or what will happen tomorrow."