The Brick Bible

A while back I got two really awesome books as a birthday gift: The Old Testament and the New Testament of the Brick Bible!

While I may not be much of a religious person, I fell in love with the books as soon as I saw them. Written and illustrated by "Reverend"Brendan Powell Smith, the Brick Bible is exactly what it sounds like: the stories of both testaments of the holy bible (which, if you didn't already know, is a pretty important book to a lot of people) illustrated entirely using LEGO. 

Smith began illustrating stories from the book of genesis in 2001, and published his works online. The stories are told using images of LEGO dioramas Smith created using bricks from his own creation. I remember seeing his religious LEGO creations online a long time ago, and being confused, intrigued and amazed by them. His "style" has definitely improved since he began, as almost every image in the books are full of color and detail. Smith's illustrations are also beautiful due to the cleverness he uses when working with lego-- a skill that has visibly improved for smith over the past decade. On almost every page I'm wowed by another creative use of LEGO bricks to portray the biblical scenes. 

Brendan Powell Smith doesn't shy away from depicting any
part of the bible, including sex, murder, birth, death, rape,
burning in hell, and everything else!

Just like Zbigniew Liberia's Konzentrationslager (A work of contemporary art that depicts a concentration camp built from LEGO bricks), there is a strong juxtaposition in Smith's illustrations of the bible. Smith obviously felt no need to censor the bible despite his depiction using an undeniably childish medium, so there are plenty scenes of rape, death, plague and all that other fun stuff that can be found in the bible. In fact, nothing is left out, or even altered, as Smiths storytelling is about as literal as it gets. 

Smith may be literal with his storytelling, but he certainly gets creative with his depiction and visual interpretation of the subject matter. When depicting the deadly sins, such as greed, Smith shows happy LEGO men driving little red LEGO sports cars. All LEGO elements are used (and only a few are modified). 

It seems that throughout Smith's venture into the world of LEGO storytelling, he has become more than just a reverend, and somewhat of an artist. His works are are technical, clever, and beautiful that they are displayed at galleries. I would say that there is undoubtedly an artistic nature to taking a subject -- especially one as delicate and precious as the holy scripture-- and illustrating it using LEGO. There is a lot of audacity in Smith's work, which makes him even more of an artist. 

I would recommend checking out Smith's website, and definitely taking a look at the Brick Bible (as well as some of his other works, which depict presidential assassinations, among other things). You don't need to be a religious person to appreciate the level of craft, creativity, audacity and storytelling that Smith exhibits in all of his works.