"It just had this appeal to me because you can create the things you don't have." Meet Ekow Nimako, a Ghanaian-Canadian artist who uses black LEGO bricks to build jaw-dropping sculptures. While some of his masterpieces take nearly one-thousand hours to create, he has the ability to prototype a new design in just one day. We tour his home studios where he began creating his breathtaking art and explore some of his custom builds inspired by Black mythology.Director: Charlie JordanDirector of Photography: Dave SandersEditor: Jordan CaligExpert: Ekow NimakoCreative Producer: Wendi JonassenLine Producer: Joseph BuscemiAssociate Producer: Brandon WhiteProduction Manager: D. Eric MartinezProduction Coordinator: Fernando DavilaCamera Operator: Jerome W. TanSound Mixer: Dave PlankProduction Assistant: Andrew VancePost Production Supervisor: Alexa DeutschPost Production Coordinator: Ian BryantSupervising Editor: Doug LarsenAssistant Editor: Justin Symonds
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TechTranscript
00:00 (drumming)
00:02 So this has my name etched in gold.
00:05 This is my signature piece.
00:07 This is what completes an artwork.
00:09 - Meet Echo Numako, a Ghanaian-Canadian artist
00:13 making breathtaking art out of black Lego bricks.
00:16 - My entire life, I've probably clicked
00:18 hundreds of thousands of parts, probably millions.
00:21 - Is it Legos or Lego?
00:22 (laughing)
00:24 - Are you serious?
00:25 It's Lego.
00:26 It's never Legos.
00:27 And Lego actually is an abbreviated form of Leggoat,
00:30 which is Danish for play well.
00:33 Little known fact.
00:34 - Echo's jaw-dropping sculptures are exhibited in galleries,
00:39 but they began in DIY studios at his home.
00:42 - Welcome to Studio A, the first of my three studio rooms.
00:46 This is where I build most of my
00:48 building black mythos artworks.
00:50 Really an exploration of black African mythology.
00:53 This one, I'm actually not sure what this sculpture
00:57 is going to be.
00:58 I know it will be a goddess.
00:59 I know that she will have these kind of cornrows going on.
01:03 This tubing was not made to be hair,
01:05 but when I look at parts now,
01:07 I just see different parts of anatomy
01:10 that just like speak out to me.
01:11 This artwork so far, I think I've clocked in
01:14 almost 100 hours.
01:16 Some artworks could take up to 1,000 hours.
01:19 - While some of Echo's larger pieces can take 1,000 hours,
01:22 he could prototype a new, smaller design from scratch
01:25 in just a day.
01:26 - So we're in Studio C.
01:28 It's where I'm building my series,
01:30 Building Black Amorphia, Spiritual Starships.
01:33 So I'm going to build a spiritual starship today.
01:36 The idea behind it is that we are taking inspiration
01:39 from science fiction, but at the same time,
01:42 it's very important for me to centralize black characters,
01:46 black stories, black history within that context.
01:49 So I'll be taking the form of a T-47 air speeder
01:54 and turning it into an ancestral vessel.
01:58 So let's have some fun.
01:59 All right, let's see.
02:00 Once the spine is completed,
02:04 I'll look at some reference photos of the ship
02:07 and then start constructing the wing shape.
02:10 Dropping Lego is actually the most annoying thing.
02:15 People think that stepping on Lego
02:17 is like the most annoying thing,
02:19 but to me, the most annoying thing is spilling them
02:22 outright, just knocking a container over
02:24 and it just spills everywhere.
02:26 You see what I mean?
02:31 Like the rage that fills up
02:33 when I'm just like trying to get something done
02:35 and then shit just scatters.
02:36 Ah.
02:38 - While dropping pieces is a frustration,
02:40 Echo still needs to keep a massive amount of parts on hand
02:44 to actualize his sculptures.
02:45 - Each of my studios has a section
02:48 that is dedicated to the parts.
02:50 This is Studio B.
02:52 [air whooshing]
02:55 You gotta love that.
02:56 This piece right here is a jumper.
02:58 It has a stud or a notch right in the center
03:01 and opposed to a piece like this,
03:03 which would naturally have two studs on it.
03:05 Over here, I've got various different tires.
03:07 The Lego group actually produces
03:09 the most tires in the world.
03:12 More than Goodyear, more than Michelin,
03:14 'cause their tires are actually made of rubber,
03:15 so they're classified as actual tires.
03:18 Oh yes, the hinge with the ball joint.
03:21 What this hinge joint allowed is for me
03:23 to put these fairings anywhere I want.
03:27 Got your standard tiles.
03:28 I like to cover all the notches and studs on my work.
03:31 Triangle tile allows you to get some great
03:34 geometric patterns when you put them all together.
03:37 These are always great.
03:38 Inverted tiles.
03:39 The beauty of inverted parts
03:41 is that they click from the bottom up.
03:44 Now I do wanna find like a discontinued part like this.
03:48 Look at the design.
03:49 It's one of those pieces that I would have to
03:51 even second guess if I saw it sitting down there
03:54 and wonder if it actually is a Lego element.
03:57 I think I only have one of these in my entire collection
03:59 and I've got like millions of parts.
04:01 The most common reaction when I tell people what I do
04:04 is usually excitement.
04:05 There's this kind of, oh my God,
04:07 you get to do what you love.
04:09 It is amazing.
04:11 More importantly, it's a privilege.
04:13 A metric of if you love what you do
04:15 is when people say, if you won the lottery,
04:18 would you still do what you do?
04:19 And mine would be yes.
04:21 I would just get a bigger studio,
04:22 more staff and build bigger things.
04:25 This piece is called Kadeesa.
04:27 Kadeesa is a dragon cat
04:29 and dragon cats are creatures that I came up with.
04:31 I've always been fascinated with avian creatures.
04:34 I took some inspiration from the griffin
04:36 and made this feline cat with wings.
04:40 - These lengthy builds are not just reflective
04:42 of Echo's artistic talent,
04:43 but also a lifetime love of Lego.
04:46 - I started building with Lego
04:47 when I was about three or four years old.
04:49 I started off inheriting Lego from my older brother.
04:52 It just had this appeal to me
04:55 because you can create the things you don't have.
04:57 If I see something that I wanted,
05:00 then I would be able to satisfy that urge
05:02 by going to my Lego collection
05:03 and building something that would just placate me.
05:06 So when I first started building, it was purely for fun.
05:09 Eventually it got elevated to an art form.
05:12 In 2007 though, is when I had this resurgence
05:15 of interest in building.
05:17 And I just realized how fun it was again.
05:19 And it just kind of stayed with me a little bit closer
05:22 from that point.
05:23 And then by 2012, 2013,
05:25 I was really trying to make my mark as an artist
05:28 and the two things just kind of came together.
05:30 This artwork is very special to me
05:32 because I've had this artwork since I began my career.
05:37 I created this artwork when she was about
05:39 the size of a six year old.
05:40 Since then, it has evolved.
05:43 What I most enjoy about this artwork
05:45 is the hair.
05:46 Like this cylindrical piece is great.
05:48 Hole in the top, hole in the bottom.
05:50 And they have weight.
05:51 And when you have so much volume of hair,
05:54 there's just like a gravity to it.
05:55 And when it comes to black people, our hair is political.
05:57 For all the people that are gonna see this work
06:00 and be inspired by it,
06:01 to have their identity reinforced
06:03 from a material that historically underrepresented them,
06:07 means a lot.
06:08 So making the formal outlines and the shape of a mask
06:11 is like the first step.
06:12 And then once the shape is laid out,
06:14 then all the fun stuff really starts happening
06:16 where you get to like start giving it
06:17 some kind of personality.
06:19 It can be grueling work sometimes.
06:21 And you know, my joints have suffered from building.
06:25 Carpal tunnel syndrome is real.
06:27 - But all the pain is worth it
06:28 for Echo to make these textured works of art.
06:31 - This sculpture is called Kweku Anansi.
06:33 Kweku Anansi is an Akan deity, a trickster god.
06:37 My favorite feature, I really like the crown.
06:40 The main center part of the crown
06:42 is a combination of two different parts.
06:44 And they're both discontinued if I'm not mistaken.
06:47 I always think it's really fascinating
06:49 when I'm able to use discontinued parts
06:50 because there's something more rare about it.
06:53 There's only so many of them left on the world.
06:55 Nancy took me, I'd say about 300 hours plus
06:59 over like a long period of time.
07:01 So start thinking about the eyes
07:04 when it comes to expression.
07:06 Yeah, there's something about the personality
07:08 that can be found in our eyes.
07:10 So there's something here.
07:11 This eye outline looks animated to me.
07:14 Okay, so we've got this pair of eyes
07:17 and I also did like some structural stuff
07:19 so that I can place a nose in there.
07:21 Right now, just laying down some tiles.
07:24 Tiles are great because you can put something down
07:28 on the tiles and then like kind of slide it and shift it
07:31 till you know exactly where you want it to sit.
07:33 And then once you do, you start building things
07:35 that will kind of keep it in place.
07:37 I think just about there.
07:39 You know, as you're building along,
07:41 you wanna make sure that you're not just building
07:43 for filler at any point.
07:45 Problem with Lego building too is that
07:48 you run the risk of doing too much,
07:50 which is what, in my opinion,
07:51 90% of people that build with Lego, they do.
07:54 Just because you can do something
07:56 doesn't mean you should.
07:57 Couldn't tell you what set had these created, I don't know.
08:00 But when I see these things, I don't buy sets a lot,
08:04 I buy parts and they speak to me not as what they are,
08:07 but as what they could be.
08:09 All right, we're almost there.
08:11 One good way to get a metric of how far I have to go
08:15 is how many studs do you see?
08:17 Just need to add a couple more pieces on here.
08:19 So this is the final piece.
08:22 This has my name etched in gold.
08:24 This is what completes an artwork.
08:25 The last click is always satisfying.
08:27 This piece is not titled yet.
08:35 Usually the titles take a little while to come to me.
08:38 I like that it maintained the aerodynamic shape
08:42 of the T-47 air speeder.
08:45 But at the same time, when you look at this mask,
08:47 you don't automatically associate it
08:49 with a Star Wars vessel.
08:50 For me, when I look at it,
08:51 all I see are the faces of my ancestors.
08:54 When creating masks, I have a certain kind of freedom
08:57 that I don't typically have with the rest of my works.
08:59 Because there's no body to the face,
09:01 I have the freedom to make the eyes as large as I want.
09:04 I have the freedom to create these kind of like eyebrows
09:08 using these fin-like pieces.
09:10 - No matter how many hours Eko spends
09:13 building these marvelous pieces of art,
09:15 he's always looking to the future,
09:17 both in his work and in the Lego community.
09:20 - I've always been a futurist,
09:21 imagining liberated futures for Black people
09:24 and for all people, ultimately.
09:26 I think the Lego group has gotten a lot better
09:28 in regards to how inclusive and diverse they are.
09:31 But growing up, it was a completely different story.
09:34 The interesting thing about the Lego-verse,
09:36 especially when it's rooted in like the yellow minifigure,
09:39 The Simpsons taught me, you know,
09:41 that yellow is synonymous with white.
09:43 But just like any kind of equity work,
09:45 there's always more and it's a long road.
09:48 But it seems like they're committed
09:50 to making the right choices.
09:51 As a Black artist, our work is healing
09:54 and it's edifying for Black children
09:57 to see themselves reflected in this toy form.
10:00 I think that's really important
10:02 and that keeps me waking up wanting to do this as well
10:04 is that I've been granted the gift.
10:07 Gifts should not go to waste.
10:08 (upbeat music)