BrickUniverse, Knoxville - August 26-27

Post date: Sep 19, 2017 3:41:21 PM

This year saw Knoxville's first ever LEGO fan convention come to town in the form of BrickUniverse! We were fortunate to be part of this amazing event which also included artists Rocco Buttliere, Jonathan Lopes and Paul Hetherington and drew a crowd of 5000 public visitors to the beautiful Knoxville Convention Center over the weekend.

We had a strong showing from the club with members from Nashville and Huntsville making the trip and a large portion of the Knoxville chapter exhibiting. There were amazing exhibits all around and we chose this show to debut our new model of the Henley Street Bridge. A dozen members poured 600 hours into its construction and all three chapters rallied at the end to address last minute details. The public reception was amazing and we're looking forward to displaying it frequently around town.

Jacob Carpenter also brought his enormous Death Star which was a huge hit, the club collaborated on a large town and train layout, we put together our largest GBC to date, ran Sumo Bot demonstrations all weekend and exhibited a wide variety of MOCs including Marty's growing post-apocalyptic layout, a Micropolis collaboration complete with Mike's Sunshpere, Maxifig superheros and more!

We were also extremely appreciative of the opportunity to receive a guided tour through Paul Hetherington's gallery after public hours on Saturday. Paul was quite the host, explaining his design process and philosophy in detail, answering our questions and just being really open on a wide range of subjects, from the humorous to deeply personal. It was a really great time and a unique treat for the club.

The Knoxville crowd was great, with all kinds of questions and interest expressed and we're all appreciative of Greyson Beights and the whole BrickUniverse crew for bringing their convention to Knoxville. It was a complete blast and we're told it will be returning in 2018!