College tends to be a time when the Dark Age starts and interest in LEGO wanes, but for some students in The LEGO Brick Club at The Ohio State University, exactly the opposite is happening. In today’s guest article, Angela Acosta shares the story about how the group made a mosaic of OSU’s mascot, Brutus Buckeye.

The LEGO Brick Club

Ohio State University’s premier LEGO student organization inspires creativity in university students needing a break from their stressful schedules. The club boasts a sample of Ohio State’s diverse student population - from freshmen looking for hands-on learning and new friendships to engineering majors excited to test their skills, and everyone in between.

The LEGO Brick Club at The Ohio State University was founded in 2016 by undergraduate students Emma Clark ’18 and Jaclyn Camus ’18, with the support of our club advisor Trueshonda Carmicle. The LEGO Brick Club takes to heart the fact that LEGO is for everyone - especially college students looking for a creative outlet and stress relief. Before the pandemic, we made regular club outings and volunteer events for LEGO fans of all ages.

LEGO Brick Club officers and attendees at a big mosaic building event

Although we haven’t been able to stay active as a club because of the pandemic, we’ve created a brick-sized space for all members of our university community. We have members ranging from graduate students in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese (me!) to engineering undergrads and future vets and doctors. You can find the usual president and treasurer positions on our executive board, as well as a Master Builder position for a LEGO designer with a vision.

The LEGO Brick Club goes to the movies to see The LEGO Ninjago Movie in 2017

The LEGO Brick Club has also partnered with College Mentor for Kids to create fun and educational afterschool activities with LEGO bricks for elementary schoolers, gone on trips to our local LEGO Store at Easton Town Center in Columbus, Ohio, and hosted movie events like watching the latest Ninjago and LEGO Movie 2 releases.

I joined The LEGO Brick Club when I began my doctoral journey in 2017. It was the first time I had found a space for teens and young adults who love LEGO bricks! I’d been that kid who made LEGO models for school projects and designed her own MOCs like Wall-E and Eve. Serving as the club co-advisor for two years gave me a chance to give back to the LEGO community with my event planning skills and passion for creative expression.

Our meetings combine serious brick design with fun activities. We might start with a competition to build the tallest tower without falling (using only doors proves an added challenge)… before moving to the main event: building Brutus.

The LEGO Brick Club booth at the 2018 Student Involvement Fair at Ohio State

Building Brutus

The club started with a lofty goal: To create a life-size statue of Brutus Buckeye, The Ohio State University mascot, out of LEGO bricks.

Throughout campus, students can find Brutus Buckeye statues celebrating all aspects of Ohio State culture. We have an adventure Brutus at the Outdoor Adventure Center, a butter Brutus at the Instructional Kitchen in the Ohio Union, but ours would be the first LEGO Brutus.

Our initial plan was to build a statue like the ones we see around campus, but we ran into some structural and logistical issues. We worked on engineering Brutus’s head out of hundreds of brown and tan LEGO bricks and made several models during 2018 and 2019.

Each time, we got closer and closer to building Brutus’s smiling head, but we ran out of bricks and didn’t have the experience yet to build a huge statue.

Undeterred, we connected with the OhioLUG group in Columbus (the builders behind the awesome annual display in the Columbus Museum of Art seen below) and found a more accessible route to building the Brutus of our dreams. Rather than work vertically, we had to go horizontal by building a mosaic.

The LEGO Brick Club visits the Columbus Museum of Art's OhioLUG display

In the lead up to the actual build, our members learned how to use different online programs to design a mosaic to celebrate the sesquicentennial (150th anniversary) of The Ohio State University. Our first thought was to focus on Brutus’s head like we did for the statue, but by making a smaller body as the central figure we could add even more to the design. Our completed mosaic design showcases Brutus with the “150” sesquicentennial logo alongside the years 1870 and 2020. We also added our own flair, with a LEGO brick in the top right corner and Block “O” for Ohio State in the top left.

A Mascot Mosaic

In January 2020, The LEGO Brick Club held an event to build Brutus sponsored by OSU RHAC, the Residence Halls Advisory Council. We brought together over a dozen students and community members from LEGO novices to fans and master builders. Instead of spending months building, we were able to complete the entire mosaic in one afternoon!

We printed out instructions based on a model in the computer program that showed us where to place each color of brick and which spaces to leave empty. To keep things simple and computer-friendly, we only used 1 x 1 bricks. This made it easy and fun for everyone of all experience levels to participate by building a section of the mosaic on a base plate.

Close-up of an in-progress base plate for the mosaic

After putting all the mosaic base plates together and making a few adjustments, we had a complete mosaic by the end of the afternoon!

President Jakob Allen ’22 built a display frame for the mosaic. Brutus was finally ready for his big debut in Fall 2020 after a slight delay due to the pandemic. He now stands proudly in all his flat, horizontal glory in the Smith-Steeb Residence Hall on our Columbus, Ohio campus. You can find him on display with a beautiful plaque that reads: “Thank you to members of the Residence Halls Advisory Council & OSU’s LEGO Brick Club January 2020”.

A complete Brutus Buckeye mosaic after our building event

Were you involved with LEGO during your time in college? What other mascots have you seen made out of LEGO? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

Do you want to help BrickNerd continue publishing articles like this one? Become a top patron like Charlie Stephens, Marc & Liz Puleo, Paige Mueller, Rob Klingberg from Brickstuff, John & Joshua Hanlon from Beyond the Brick, Megan Lum, and Andy Price to show your support, get early access, exclusive swag and more.