Anthony DelMundo/New York Daily News
Artist Sean Kenney and his staff can make almost anything out of Lego in his Long Island City studio. His work has been shown throughout the country at various exhibits as well as zoos and botanical gardens.
Here’s a true toy story, Long Island City-style.
Lego master Sean Kenney and his assistants fashion portraits, animals and even lamps in a former factory on 23rd St., using hundreds of thousands of the small, colorful, plastic bricks.
The wild success of “The Lego Movie” — which has grossed more than $210 million worldwide since it debuted earlier this month — has piqued interest in Kenney’s work.
He did several movie-related promotions and carted a five-foot, yellow Lego duck to a screening at Lincoln Center.
But it has only added enthusiasm for his thriving business, which includes large-scale animals for zoos and botanical garden exhibitions, books for children and intricate landscapes for corporate displays.
“I like to build the old-fashioned way, just by sitting down with my pieces and a photograph or two of whatever I’m building, and just see where it takes me,” said Kenney, 37.
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It has been almost 10 years since Kenney shed his shirt-and-tie job in software to indulge his Legos passion full-time.
Six years ago, he moved from a smaller studio in Manhattan to a space in the Long Island City Arts Center.
His assistants are classically trained artists who help assemble the work, piece by piece.
“There’s no cheating,” said Kenney. “All the pieces connect the way they normally would, but the glue keeps the sculpture together during shipment and public display.”
Larger works are reinforced with steel armatures and mounted to bases.
Kenney, who grew up a Lego-maniac in New Jersey, said he isn’t sure why the toy continues to have so many adult fans.
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Even during the recent financial downturn, the company had some of its best years ever, he said.
“I think it’s a generational thing,” said Kenney. “People who discovered Legos in the late ’70s and early ’80s are having their own kids and rediscovering it.”
Sid Dinsay, who founded the New York City Lego Users Group, said the toy is “inherently nostalgic.”
“They coax you into creativity,” said Dinsay, 40, whose two young children build with his old Lego sets. “You can start with the model in the box, but you almost always end up with something else.”
Kenney is one of only four Lego masters in the United States to have a special business relationship with the company.
“They don’t endorse me — I still buy all the Legos I use,” said the married father of a 3-year-old and one on the way. “But I can buy in bulk from them. I used to have to go to the toy store but now I can pick up the Batphone.”
