McNaught is famous for his mastery of a toy. Now he’s got a following among ‘Adult Fans of Lego’ – and an exhibition made of more than 6m pieces
When I first met Ryan “The Brickman” McNaught a decade ago, I had my two bug-eyed sons (7 and 5, respectively) in tow. He was – and remains – the only Lego-certified professional in the southern hemisphere, and they were Lego-crazy back then. It was their first glimpse of what was at the time McNaught’s most complex commission: an intricate cross-sectioned model of the Roman Colosseum, rendered in more than 200,000 Lego blocks and installed in the University of Sydney’s Nicholson Museum.
A year later, we met again, this time in his immaculately organised garage in Pascoe Vale South in Melbourne, not far from Essendon Football Club’s Windy Hill.
