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Jordan Schwartz’ fascination with LEGO earns him internship in Denmark
March 22, 2011 by Rick Massimo.
Growing up in East Providence, Jordan Schwartz knew what he wanted to do with
his life.
His mother, Lisa, says that while recently going through some old papers in
their house she came across an elementary-school essay by Jordan, in which he
wrote that he would become the CEO of the LEGO company.
“I’m going to build with blocks someday for a living!” he wrote.
Well, he’s not CEO yet, but Schwartz, 18, is spending the year in Billund,
Denmark, working for LEGO as a designer, creating the building blocks for the
dreams of today’s kids — and adults, too.
When Jordan was 3 years old, his oldest brother, Ben, got a LEGO set. Jordan
joined in immediately. “I started building voraciously,” he remembers. “And of
course, being his younger brother, I looked up to him and wanted to be like him.
So I got into LEGO, as did my twin (Alex). So at one point my mom had to buy
three of every set. And eventually, they both stopped, so I had this massive
collection.”
It continued from there, says Jordan, a graduate of Our Lady of Fatima High
School in Warren: “It’s usually around 12 or 13 that kids start to wean off LEGO
and move on to other things. But I kept building.”
He began displaying his creations online at www.brickstud.com, writing for the LEGO-fan publication BrickJournal and going
to LEGO-related conventions, where he got the rock-star treatment, Lisa Schwartz
remembers.
“Everyone was coming up to him” to congratulate him on his work, she says. “They
never realized he was just a kid online.… Some people were shaking my hand, as
the parent.”
She says she didn’t realize the depth of his talent. “I thought everything he
built was really cute, but I didn’t realize how people focused in on it — these
adult fans of LEGO, and the artistic quality of it.”
Jordan, who has taken a leave of absence from the Massachusetts College of Art,
is designing LEGO sets and products, the first of which will come out next year.
He can’t say exactly what it is, but says he’s working on the Creator and LEGO
Direct lines. In the Creator line, each set has a main model that can be built,
along with two alternate designs. “I think it’s the soul of LEGO, because it
represents what LEGO is all about.”
LEGO Direct is a line of big sets aimed at adult fans, and run between $100 and
$200. “They’re very complex and intricate. I come from the fan community, so
they needed a fan to work on stuff for the fans.”
While LEGO has mushroomed in complexity and detail over the decades, Jordan says
that the Bricks and More line is just “tubs of bricks.” “I don’t think more
elements restricts creativity. They’re not taking away the basic stuff; they’re
just adding to it. There’s no such thing as a useless element; you just gotta
build a lot.”
Jordan builds a lot. Or he used to. Now, he doesn’t have a lot of time for his
own creations, what with working on new products all day. “I can come in on the
weekends and build for myself, which I’ve done a couple of times.” He says that
creating new stuff and building with existing blocks are two different things —
“it’s night and day. There’s no way I could produce the stuff I build for
myself; it’s too delicate.”
He wouldn’t be the first person who, faced with working day-to-day on his
avocation, finds that he doesn’t want to make it his professional life. But he
says it’s too early to think about that — he’s only been there three months.
“The novelty hasn’t worn off yet. So far I’m pretty happy doing this, and I’m
lucky to get paid to do it.”
He hopes it’ll lead to full employment — “so far they’re happy with my work, so
that’s good” — but on the other hand, he’s still only 18 and has visions of
finishing college, earning a degree in architecture or industrial design. He
could leave for four years for college and then try to come back, but a lot will
have changed, he says. “The company’s always changing and it’s always evolving.
So hopefully I can work something out. … I’ve got a lot to think about.”
Lisa says she told him, “If they ask you, just do it while you’re young. And
then you can always go to school. He’s very smart anyway. Whatever makes him
happy; he should follow his passion.”
The biggest adjustment so far has been living on his own. “I don’t want to say
my parents did everything for me, but there were a lot of nitty-gritty little
things that I didn’t have to worry about. And now I have to do everything for
myself. I couldn’t cook a thing when I came over here; I learned very quickly
how to cook.”
He hopes his family will visit him over the summer, when he has a couple of
weeks off, but also aims to come back to Rhode Island, perhaps for a holiday.
Source:
Projo.com
-end of report-
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