What’s wrong with this Zebra?

Currently at the Tucson Botanical Garden is an exhibition of LEGO(R) sculptures by Sean Kenney, including the zebra shown at the top of this post. It is featured in a prominent position in the garden.

“Whoa!”, I said to myself as I started to photograph it. “Why are the stripes horizontal? Real zebra stripes are vertical so these animals will be less visible to predators on the African savannah.”

Then I remembered seeing a zebra portrait in Legos near the garden entrance by the same artist. So I went back and on that portrait the black stripes are correct. Why he chose to use horizontal stripes rather than vertical on the 3-demensional version of a zebra was, I suspect, an aesthetic decision. The other two dozen or so animal sculptures in the garden are not in colors that match or even approximate their natural coloration. But the horizontal-striped zebra stood out as odd.

The animals vanish after April 23rd

So here are some of the other animal sculptures on display until April 23rd, starting with a red lion and pink dog. Beside each sculpture is a sign that tells how many Lego pieces Kenney used to make it and how long it took to create it. (Hint: tens of thousands of pieces and hundreds of hours.)

In other parts of the garden were a dazzling large dragonfly behind the ramadas and a stalking snow leopard with art flags behind it, left over from a different garden display a year ago.

A little further away, near the iris garden, a dozen or more Lego bunnies hid among the tall iris leaves while a colorful eagle watched over the site. I wonder if this bunny took color cues from the zebra? He would have been better off in brown to have truly been in disguise! But none of the bunnies were brown.

And two more by Sean Kenney: a gardener and his son and over in the prehistoric garden, an extinct Dodo bird in Lego, and (not in Lego) as a permanent sculpture in the garden, an extinct member of the dinosaur family, a velicorapter, I think.

The best LEGO artist in America

This was not the first Lego sculpture exhibition I have seen. Back in 2017, Nathan Sawaya, who has been named the best Lego artist in America, created 5 figures of men sitting on park benches in a plaza dedicated to sculptures in downtown Los Angeles. All the figures are all based on himself.

So if you have a child or grandchild, like this little girl near the entrance of the Tucson Botanical Garden, assembling Legos into whatever is in her imagination, realize that she could be an artist-in-the-making! It could be more than child’s play.

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