New York Phantasmagoria

“New York Phantasmagoria" series in 1993. Each 'piece' of New York City starts with a standard 15 x 15 inch LEGO base, upon which she re-creates specific parts of the city, often including buildings from other countries, such as the Hagia Sofia, or ones that are completely imagined. The first two pieces, pictured here, were inspired in part by the dissolution of the Women's Action Coalition (WAC), which left her thinking about the class-related struggles that occurred internally. The colors of the LEGOs reference those in the WAC logo: gray, white, black and blue. Henry was also teaching at the time, and the LEGOs offered her a place to experiment with some of the basic formal qualities of art she tried to pass on to her students: color, sequence, pattern, lines, and repetition. As she's said, making these works is like "painting with LEGOs.