Brick by brick, his pastime emerged as art
By day, Raymond Girard is the president of a global content marketing firm and jets between meetings in London and Sao Paolo. In his precious down time, however, Girard indulges a secret childhood passion.
On weekends, the busy executive, who studied design and architecture, builds fantastical urban landscapes in his Toronto basement out of Lego bricks.
It’s a pastime that may have started out as a fun way to relax but is gaining serious attention, as Girard’s Lego sculptures have been commissioned, in 2014, for a show at the Holt Renfrew Men’s store and, now, for an astoundingly intricate 19 by 4-foot long installation involving more than 500,000 bricks of Lego that is on permanent display at Hamilton’s new Ron Joyce Children’s Health Centre.
In choosing Lego as a medium, Girard joins the ranks of internationally acclaimed artists such as Ai Weiwei, Ólafur Eliasson and Douglas Coupland as well as billions of children all over the world whose parents bear the scars of having inadvertently stepped on a tiny yet ferocious fragment of the Millennium Falcon while searching for a stray brick in their bare feet.
“As a medium it’s supereasy to work with,” offers Girard.
“It’s clean and doesn’t require brushes or water or anything other than a tabletop. It also packs easily in a carry-on, which is important given my work life.”
Girard’s day job involves so much travel that he almost turned down the commission when he got the call from curator Sarah Beatty Russell, who was looking for a large-scale piece that would work to sustain the interest of both children who are patients of the hospital’s prosthetics clinic and the adults who accompany them on regular visits.
“I went from saying, ‘I have a corporate job! I’m working on a merger and acquisition in Brazil, there is no way I can do this’ to, ‘well, maybe if I hire someone to help me sort out the tiles, I might be able make it happen,’ ” says Girard, who was working on a tight, three-to-four month timeline for delivery and installation.
A barista at Girard’s corner coffee shop came in to save the day, sorting bricks by size and colour so that Girard was freed up to build and dream, just like he did after school on a card table in front of the TV in his childhood home in snowy Winnipeg.
Inspiration this time around came from Girard’s travels in the futuristic urban centres of Asia and South America.
“I started looking at what I was building and I realized, that section looks a little bit like Sao Paolo and this bit is starting to resemble parts of Hong Kong,” says Girard, who also discovered some of the engineering challenges of creating such a large-scale Lego work re- semble those of building an actual city.
Hassles aside, Lego appeals to Girard’s sense of design and order.
“It’s got built-in limitations that I love pushing to the limit. It’s a gridded product that’s suited to rectilin- ear expression, but it’s fun to bend and curve them too,” says Girard.
“That satisfying sound the bricks make when they fit together; it’s just such a beautifully engineered product. I’ve worked with 500,000 bricks on this project and there wasn’t a single flaw . . . no nicks, warps or colour inconsistencies. Every brick is almost a work of art.” Karen von Hahn is a Toronto-based writer, trend observer and style commentator. Contact her at kvh@karenvonhahn.com.