1-A job building things with Lego bricks sounds like a dream. However, it is real for Sean Kenney. He turned his hobby into a job. 

2-For more than 15 years, Kenney has made masterpieces using Lego bricks. His art has been shown at museums and zoos around the world.

3-His latest work, "Nature Connects: Art with Lego Bricks" is one of his biggest projects. It is on tour across the United States. It is at the San Antonio Zoo in Texas, the Denver Zoo in Colorado, Flamingo Gardens in Davie, Florida, and the North Carolina Arboretum in Asheville. 

4-The traveling show began in 2012. It shows life-size and larger-than-life copies of plants and animals.

From Buildings To Plants To Polar Bears

5-Like many kids, Kenney played with Legos. As an adult, he worked as a designer, often using Lego bricks in his work. 

6-Living in New York City, he created models of buildings there. Then a botanical garden in Iowa asked him to build models of its plants. He began to make the natural world his focus. His work began touring to other places. It was so popular that zoos hired him to make models of their animals.

7-Kenney has made more than 150 animals out of Lego blocks. They include lions, polar bears, buffalo, butterflies and ducks. Making them lifelike is not easy.

Lego Animals Sometimes Fool Zoo Visitors

The biggest challenge is getting the softness of an animal's looks and getting the face right, he said. "To me, that's one of the most fun things to overcome. When you've done it, you've really done it. You step back and are proud of it."

Kenney remembers a woman at one of his shows turned to see his art of a snow leopard crouched down. She jumped back, thinking it was alive. "That's why the challenge is worth it," he said.

Photos, Videos And Thousands Of Legos

Kenney works with a group of artists. They work in teams to create each piece. Most start out as sketches on paper. Then they plan the shape and size of the animal. 

They look at photos and videos online to see how the animal moves, he said.

One sculpture can take thousands of bricks and months of work to complete. Builders glue every brick together as if they are making a brick wall. A lion took 474 hours and 48,248 bricks to build.

Kenney said that he uses only Legos that are sold to the public. He does not use any special bricks. "I use the same ones that children play with," he said.

Statues Can Have Conservation Message

Kenney is interested in building animals that are extinct, like the Dodo bird. It went extinct, or died out, in the 1680s. He also uses endangered animals, which are animals that are at risk of dying out. 

He made a piece of a Formosan clouded leopard. The animal lives in the mountains of Taiwan, a country in Asia. Its habitat, or living area, is shrinking as trees are cut down. The leopard was thought to be extinct until people saw it in 2018.

People enjoy Kenney's pieces for their artistry and because they bring attention to conservation. Wildlife conservation is the protection of animals and their habitats.   

Hope Roth works for the San Antonio Zoo. The zoo has more than 30 sculptures by Kenney.

"His work is amazing and so impactful when you see it in person," Roth said.