(Union City, Tenn., May 9, 2024) — Discovery Park of America has begun a summer of inspiration with LEGO® bricks with Friday night’s opening of “Sean Kenney’s Nature Connects®, made with LEGO® bricks.” Summer 2024 at Discovery Park will also include LEGO Bricks Camps, “Bricks and Sips: Adult LEGO Night at Discovery Park,” a LEGO Brick competition with the Obion River Regional Library Center and the addition of giant building blocks in the Simmons Bank Children’s Exploration Gallery.

The one-of-a-kind outdoor exhibit opened with the members-only event and will be at the museum and heritage park in Union City, Tennessee through Sept. 2, 2024. This traveling exhibit featuring sculptures by Sean Kenney and produced by Imagine Exhibitions is sponsored by Leaders Credit Union. The temporary exhibit is free with admission or membership.

Sean Kenney was a recent guest on Discovery Park’s podcast, “Reelfoot Forward: A West Tennessee Podcast.” During the episode recorded from his home and studio in Amsterdam, Kenney shared what inspires him to create such elaborate sculptures from LEGO bricks and the challenge of creating three-dimensional sculptures. “Part of what I do is try to make my sculptures feel soft,” said Kenney during the episode. “I think about them graphically like cartoon art and how I’m going to make them look less ‘digital and robotic.’”

Kenney also shared the story of a set of his deer sculptures that were created specifically for The LEGO Company’s new office campus in Billund, Denmark. “After seeing the artwork in one of my traveling exhibits, the LEGO company requested a custom-designed version of a family of deer for one of their new office buildings. We worked together to create a custom installation that fit the aesthetic of the space while remaining true to the spirit of the piece.”

The exhibit of 19 sculptures created by Kenney currently on display at Discovery Park include a monarch butterfly built with 60,500 LEGO bricks that took 377 hours to build, a life-sized gardener built with 37,400 LEGO bricks that took 320 hours to build and various giant plants, animals and insects.

The museum will also be hosting numerous camps this summer. “Having an award-winning display of LEGO sculptures made this the perfect summer for camps with activities centered around everyone’s favorite building bricks,” said Discovery Park’s education director, Michael Larkin. “This provides another opportunity for us to inspire the next generation of artists, engineers and builders.” The dates for the week-long camps with a focus on building with LEGO® bricks are July 17-21, July 15-19 and July 22-26.

Included in the many other activities this summer is an event for adults, “Bricks and Sips: Adult LEGO Night at Discovery Park on Saturday, July 27.

Discovery Park is also participating in a competition in partnership with the Obion River Regional Library Center. The competition will take place from August to November 2024 with a new theme each month. Participants will submit sculptures made with LEGO bricks to one of the 19 local libraries where one winner will be selected from each category. Every winner at each library will receive a one-year family membership to Discovery Park and a spotlight on Discovery Park’s social media. The winners will also be displayed at Discovery Park each month. Grand prize winners will be chosen at the end of the competition, and each will receive ten additional tickets to Discovery Park to share with friends and family.

To plan your summer of inspiration with LEGO bricks visit discoveryparkofamerica.com/legosummer.

Photo caption: (Left to right) Katherine Collins,
Grant Collins, Beth Collins and Able Collins at
Discovery Park’s members-only premiere of
“Sean Kenney’s Nature Connects®, made with
LEGO® bricks on display at Discovery Park now
through Sept. 2, 2024.

Download High-Resolution Photo