Multi-media artist Katherine Duclos relocated to Vancouver, British Columbia several years after receiving her MFA in Painting and Drawing from Pratt Institute in 2012. She resides in Vancouver with her family, and maintains an active studio practice through which she explores concepts of motherhood, identity, neurodivergence, materiality, and more. Duclos began using LEGO bricks as an artistic medium in 2021 while playing and building with the material alongside her then 4-year-old son. The visual instructions that came with her son’s LEGO sets didn’t mesh well with her neurodivergent brain, and she found it difficult to help him assemble them correctly as prescribed. However, she had an epiphany when 

“…one day handed me four pieces put together and said, ‘I thought you’d like these colors next to each other.’ I did. In that moment, I realized that I did not have to build representational objects by a set of rules I couldn’t understand, but could instead use LEGO bricks as pieces of modular color for abstract constructions, helping me regulate and process the intense sensory overload I experience daily as an Autistic person with ADHD.”

This breakthrough led her to explore a new art form by utilizing the LEGO bricks her own way – without the standard instructions. Her innovative use of the plastic bricks as artistic medium eventually caught the attention of the company, and in December of 2023 she debuted a solo exhibition sponsored by LEGO at Art Basel Miami.