When we think of LEGO, we think of the famous Danish brick toys; however, over the years, LEGO was becoming more than just brick toys; it became a community of like-minded people who loved to play and construct with brick toys. One such community is the AFOL, and this community has a high number of fans that have become artists in their own right by constructing with LEGO bricks.

Since we live in an era where it does not matter what gender you are, the AFOL community also has brilliant female artists. One such artist is Alice Finch, who burst the AFOL scene with her impressive 400.000 pieces Hogwarts build. She has gained recognition as one of the featured builders in the documentary called “A LEGO Brickumentary”.

Alice Finch: A role model in the AFOL community
Alice Finch is also the co-founder of the Women’s Brick Initiative (WBI) and the Brick Alliance (BA). In addition, Alice also devotes herself to making the LEGO community more accessible to everyone.

Every LEGO fan knows about Alice’s Hogwarts build and to build Rivendell. Another collaboration where Alice worked is Mouse Guard, known in the graphics novels by David Peterson. Next came some small projects, like Potala Palace, microscale Notre Dame, and the Burg Eltz castle in Germany. Finally, because her Hogwarts build was very known, Alice was often called to participate in international conferences. To showcase her construct, she also built a travel model of Hogwarts, a more suitcase-sized version of it.

In a recent interview, Alice has mentioned that she likes doing collaborations, and she finds it rewarding to work with other people and see what comes of joint effort. Her last collaboration was with her son, where he created an entire world, and he is also writing his novel. Her son wanted to build a particular location, Dragon Bridge. During the collaboration, her son did the whole work in directing what the model would look like because this was taken from the world he developed. Alice took the instructions, and all she did was the landscaping, while her son did everything else, buildings, scenery, and placements of the minifigs.

This isn’t the only collaboration where mother and son worked together. They also worked together on Isle of Berk in 2014. Alice said that when they are in the LEGO world, they are colleagues and equals, so there is a lot of tossing back and forth of ideas. Alice’s children were always at her work. For example, while working on Riverdale, Hadrian, her youngest, was four years old, and he built a train station right through the middle of the model. She never stopped Hadrian from enjoying his childhood while creating because she invited him to join the game.

When she was working on Riverdale, besides Hadrian was busy playing with the elves, Thorin had built the bridge over the river on the very far left of the model, and he also joined in creating the trees. Of course, as the boys got older, they got much more sophisticated regarding what they could do and their conversations. Nevertheless, they both have already found their way of creation. For example, Hadrian likes to specialize in the lighting and the very technical parts of the models, while Thorin is very good at storytelling with the minifigs.

Last Words
Alice isn’t the only one who created a building with LEGO bricks. Like we mentioned at the beginning, there is a whole community of like-minded LEGO artists. Besides, LEGO isn’t the only brick toy we know. It is indeed the most popular one, but it isn’t the only one. In addition, LEGO also has a rival, lesser-known, but each day it grows in popularity, primarily through cartoon shows, such as Pokemon, Dragonball, which are popular anime series for many. Called nanoblocks, these brick toys are smaller than the ordinary LEGO bricks and are more sophisticated. Of course, these mini-series nanoblock bricks also have products destined for children, but you can also see buildings and castles with thousands of brick pieces.

However, slowly the nanoblocks also gain their community of brick artists that love to build, such as Christopher Tan. He is an Asian artist who gave up on his job and chose to pursue building with bricks, and he decides to develop his art with nanoblocks.