“Using a toy as an art medium just tickles me,” says Jennifer Raine Smart, recent contestant on season two of LEGO Masters. Smart’s bread and butter is awe-inspiring, complex builds—like her life-size sculpture of Wonder Woman.
But “the ones that are the most fun,” she says, “are the ones with the most feeling behind them.” That’s what this mosaic of Jesus Christ, pictured, was for Smart. It re-creates the painting Light of the World by Brent Borup. When she first saw the original, Smart felt immediately connected to the Savior and “felt a powerful desire to share that feeling,” she remembers.
Her portrait is part of Brick upon Brick, an exhibit in the Harold B. Lee Library curated by David M. Jungheim (BA ’01, MBA ’13), another LEGO builder and BYU employee. Jungheim’s impressively detailed LEGO brick models of temples and Church buildings fill the exhibit alongside Smart’s mosaic and pieces by other Latter-day Saint builders.
Smart’s portrait of Christ, built in five weeks of 11,000 tiny bricks, “symbolizes how we connect with Him every day in so many small ways,” she explains. The piece, she says, invites the viewer to have a one-on-one experience with Christ. And the medium of LEGO bricks takes viewers back to their childhood creativity.
After all, “we each have it in our nature to be creative,” adds Jungheim. Smart agrees. As someone naturally inclined to math and science, she loves connecting to her creative side. “That’s the most beautiful thing about the human condition,” Smart says. “We can make art out of anything, anywhere.”
