Creativity shines at LEGO-Palooza

Star Wars spaceships, a rendition of Vincent van Gogh’s “The Starry Night” and zombie petting zoos were only a few of the inspired Lego constructions on display during Morehead Planetarium and Science Center’s Lego-palooza event this Saturday and Sunday.

The N.C. Lego Users Group, known as NCLUG, held the event at the Morehead Planetarium. This was the 12th time since its conception in 2005.

NCLUG member Joe Evangelista organized this year’s Lego-palooza.

Evangelista said the partnership with Morehead Planetarium and Lego-palooza started after school events that continued to grow and resulted in the creation of the event.

For his display, Evangelista created a futuristic town highlighted with a robotic space-train monorail.

“My hope is that the kids look at creation and get that, ‘Aha!’ moment, and it will spark their creativity so that they want to go home and build and create,” Evangelista said.

Other Lego creations presented during the event included a table-sized forest scene, a collection of Lego Gundam Wings and a model of a beach town being attacked by a flying space monster.

Among the space-themed displays was a depiction of a fictional planet called Rodia that was featured in the Star Wars franchise.

The display was created by Ocey Newsome-Rogers, an NCLUG member from Asheville.

Newsome-Rogers said he made the display entirely from different sets of Legos. He said he began the sculpture with a Lego toy flower, eventually constructing a planet over the course of a month.

“I’m a lifelong fan of toys, and I feel that the younger generation has started to view Legos as a really static toy,” Newsome-Rogers said.

“I feel like the imagination has started to fade, and I wanted to show people that you can take a lot of different Lego parts and put it together to make something beautiful.”

Families and students filled the planetarium to see the Lego art pieces on display in two of the rooms.

In a third room, there was an interactive exhibit that allowed visitors to build their own Lego art under the guidance of NCLUG members.

Vinod Kurup, a resident of Chapel Hill, brought his three children to the Lego-palooza.

“It’s really cool that they have interactive exhibits for the kids,” Kurup said as he watched his children building their Lego creations.

“The idea that you can make whatever is in your head with Legos is really amazing.”

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