Nature Connects at Lauritzen Gardens
Where can you savor the once-in-a-lifetime experience created by 500,000 LEGO® bricks, clicking together to form 27 breathtakingly realistic sculptures, and 14 mind-blowing displays? The unique place available to take this all in is Lauritzen Gardens, located north of Interstate 80 and south of Omaha's historic Old Market district. Some of the other landmarks nearby include Rosenblatt Stadium, Omaha's Henry Doorly Zoo and the Durham Museum.
Bring the family on down to Lauritzen Gardens and stroll underneath an 8-foot tall hummingbird, wander aimlessly next to 7-foot roses, look a 5-foot butterfly in the eye, and then show off your own personal skills and abilities at building inside the Nature Connects exhibit's LEGO® Brickyard.
An indoor exhibit that is both inspiring and inspired at the same time, the Nature Connects at Lauritzen Gardens has been created, designed and developed to bring to light, and teach the public about, the myriad life-sustaining connections there are to Mother Earth.
Out of those half million legos already mentioned, 45,143 are on magnificent display in the mother bison, which is the exhibit's most massive structure. In addition to ‘mama’ bison, visitors will be able to enjoy creatures from six inches to eight feet in size, along with other LEGO® creations, such as a tiger swallowtail butterfly, a hummingbird, a gardener.
All throughout Nature Connects and its coinciding interpretive messages, attendees can gain extensive knowledge on the inner workings of how ecosystems are dependent upon diverse aspects of the natural world in order to survive. The exhibit also teaches how healthy and well-balanced populations are maintained, about connections between pollinators and plants, and how our endeavors as humans impact, often in a permanent and deep-rooted way, our home planet, Earth.
The wildly imaginative mind and artistically gifted building skills of Sean Kenney are responsible for bringing Nature Connects to life. An artist with 10-plus years working with LEGOS, and whose work has been highlighted by some of the nation's most well-known media outlets, such as the New York Times, Good Morning America and the Wall Street Journal, Kenney is far from a newcomer in the world of LEGO® sculpting. Among the medium's various challenges is its relatively limited palette of colors, block-shaped pieces and their respective grids.
Kenney blazed the trail for other artists with aspirations of becoming a LEGO® artist as the first LEGO® Certified Professional who is not a LEGO® employee, but enjoys official recognition by the company as a trusted business partner. For more information about the artist, and to view other works, visit Sean Kenney's website at www.seankenney.com.
Nature Connects is scheduled to run from Feb. 2nd through May 19th. The hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. The price for admittance into the Nature Connects exhibit section at Lauritzen Gardens is included with the usual admission fee: $6 for adults ($7 after April 1), $3 for children 6-12 and free for garden members and children less than six.
