Some people find peace and calm in meditation, others prefer to go for a run. Kerry Morrow finds her calm building LEGO.
Morrow, a teacher and librarian with Simcoe County District School Board, has been building LEGO since she was eight years old, and figures in the nearly 40 years that followed, she has spent thousands of hours building and creating.
“I think I liked it because everything is small and compact. You can follow instructions which I really like, but you can build on your own too,” she said, adding a recent visit to her Rebrickable account shows she has 137 sets of LEGO.
Morrow recently completed a set of the Flintsones, which she created on her own and made to fit into a shadowbox, and purchased those instructions on Rebrickable. The biggest set she’s ever completed, she added, is Assembly Square, a 4,002-piece set released in 2017 to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the company’s modular building series.
“It’s huge. It’s kind of like doing a town centre. I would compare it to our city hall in Barrie. It has three separate buildings, a little fountain in the middle. … It’s probably the biggest set that I have ever built,” she said.
The most challenging set was one of her own creations — or in LEGO lingo, a MOC (My Own Creation of Central Perk from the TV show Friends.
“It came in a small set, so I have had to create it into what they call a 32x32 grid plate so that it fits in with all my other modulars.”
Currently, the “upstairs” she said, is a set of the apartment from The Big Bang Theory, which she also had to recreate on her own to fit. That said, Morrow is impatiently awaiting the release of the two apartments from Friends, which she said will prompt her to change the set up.
As for which was her favourite to build, Morrow said it’s a toss up between the Brick Bank and The Beatles art work pictures.
For the love of LEGO
Morrow said while her own kids did enjoy building LEGO when they were younger, neither one has inherited her passion in quite the same way.
“Neither one of them were as into it as I am. Maybe it’s overwhelming, I don’t know,” she said, adding once in a while her kids will join her and help her sort through and find things.
Since moving to a new house two years ago, Morrow has managed to create a space where she can spread out her LEGO creations and keep things organized. Each shape now has its own drawer, a system she has realized makes building a lot more efficient.
“Before, it was just in buckets (and) sorted by colour. After reading stuff online, people were saying how much easier it is to find when it’s sorted by the shape, so that’s when I started buying the drawers and organizing it.”
Most of Morrow’s sets stay assembled, but not all due to space issues, but Morrow said once her husband finishes the basement and she has an official “LEGO room” that will no longer be a problem.
“There are some Harry Potter ones I would like to build, but they’re very big and don’t fit in my city. But, I have a plan, and when I get my LEGO room, there will be the village, and then Canada’s Wonderland or whatever I want to call it, so I could fit the Harry Potter castle there,my roller-coaster, Ferris wheel and merry go round would all fit in my amusement park.”
When asked if she would call it an obsession, Morrow hesitated, but after hearing her husband laughing and seeing him nodding in the background, she ultimately changed her tune.
“Yes, I would call it an obsession,” she laughed. “When that set comes out June 1, I will stay up until midnight to ensure I get it. If I don’t it is going to sell out and I will probably have to pay more money for it, so I want to make sure that I have that set in my hands.”
Sharing the joy
Morrow has been running a LEGO club at school for a few years, but said it wasn’t until school moved online that her students really found out about how bit her love of the tiny bricks went.
“There are a few staff members that know I do LEGO … something I shouldn’t share that with anybody,” she joked, adding during a class in January, one of the staff members mentioned her LEGO, and one of the students asked to see it.
“I went downstairs and showed them, Then of course they talked to siblings, and other classes started asking to see it. Kids say “it’s like the LEGO movie. … It’s not — I wish it was, though!” she said.
Most of the students are pretty shocked when they see her collection. That said, she’s found sharing her love of LEGO with students has opened up a dialogue that shows you don’t have to be a little kid to love building.
“I’ve had some intermediates talk to me about it because they’re still building and it makes them feel OK to be in Grade 7 and 8 and be building … because “she is way older than me and she’s still playing with LEGO.”
On the hunt
Morrow recently acquired the Grand Emporium, a 2,182 advanced model, which was retired in 2014.
“It’s one of those white whales I’ve wanted for a very, very long time. There are three modulars I don’t have — now there are only two, but one of them is worth so much money it will never be mine… (so) I am going to try to build it separately.”
The Green Grocer is another set Morrow would love to get her hands on. The three story, 2,352-piece advanced model is one of the first modulars that LEGO came out with, she said, adding she is going to attempt to build it on her own as it was retired 11 years ago.
“The problem is it’s not going to be the same colour because the sand green colour is so expensive to buy that it would cost more than the $3,000 to buy a used set. If you can find a new one in a kit it’d be like $5,000!”
In the zone
Morrow finds building LEGO to be extremely relaxing, she admitted, and often goes down and builds when she needs to relax.
“I get in a zone when building … I find it just relaxing. My husband says the noise when running (my) hands through it sounds like running through glass, (but) I don’t even hear that,” she said. “It’s just like how some people walk or run or read a book — and I do read books — but I can go there and it’s my space and nobody comes there.
"It’s like when you do laundry, nobody is coming to help you — except that’s not nearly as fun as building LEGO.”
