This larger-than-life flying bee is over 4 feet long and has a 6 foot wingspan! The sculpture contains 16,383 LEGO pieces and took 4 weeks to design, build, and glue. It is suspended 15 feet in mid-air!

Spin the bee!
Press play, below, to see a 360-degree spin of this giant creepy LEGO bee :)

The sculpture was installed in April 2012 at Reiman Gardens in Iowa as part of my traveling exhibition, Nature Connects. In October 2012 it will travel to it’s next location, so stay tuned for updates!

Close-ups

Here’s a sneak peek at a TECHNIC piece used on each outer wing to help keep it rigidly attached to the body.

Building it

The sculpture took over 160 hours to design, build, and glue by my team and I. My assistant, Ji Yoon, took my designs and spent nearly 4 weeks assembling the sculpture.

Because the bee needed to be suspended in mid-air, we put a steel rod through his body and attached a small eyelet through the top of his back. But more importantly, we needed to make sure the weight was perfectly balanced! … If his head was heavier than his butt, he would hang nose-first to the ground. So I bought a lot of lead weights in a lot of sizes to build into the sculpture once we were most of the way done and could see which way he wanted to lean.

Magically, when we hoisted him up off the table for the first time and attached his legs, he was 100% perfectly balanced! No weights or counterbalances or sneaky tricks required!! Amazing! (Mostly dumb luck.)

The entire sculpture was assembled in my New York City art studio, then custom-crated in museum-quality exhibition crates for my new show, Nature Connects, which is currently touring the United States.

AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
GIANT BEE!