Richard Dawson

 Back in 2018 I finished my large project on Pori-based avant-garde rock band Circle. A year later I displayed it at the Masterpieces Gallery in the Lego House. The display was supposed to last one year, but it was extended into 2021 due to the pandemic. This meant that for a while no-one (except the employees) could see the gallery, and later only mostly the Danish were able to visit it. Nonetheless, I think huge number of people saw it, and it was of course a very nice trip to be there, along with AFOL day and the Skaerbaek Fan Weekend. I got Circle back in late 2021, mummified in plastic wrap. Circle dudes stayed in these cocoons for over a year.

In the past-time, the real Circle band went through changes: they intoduced a new member, UK citizen and folk singer-songwriter Richard Dawson, who had made several acclaimed albums and already featured on one Janne Westerlund's solo album. Dawson made a debut in live line-up in 2019 and during the pandemic they published a small-issue improvisational free-form cassette Hymiö. The grand double-LP Henki, featuring songs about plants (lyrics and lead vocals by Dawson), was released in November 2021 and got a wide publicity (for a Circle album). The toured Europe and had some gigs in Finland - I saw them in Manse Psych Fest in my hometown, Manchester of Finland. Instead of rivets, spikes and colourful spandexes featured on my Circle MOC, they now had black uniforms with green scarves. 

Back to me and spring-winter 2023. There was about to be Pii Poo's Lego event in Pori, and I knew I had to display Circle there. But I wanted to have the complete current line-up, so I built Richard Dawson. It took a few days before the event (that was three weeks ago). It was made easy due to black colour scheme; it's painless to make all the joints in black, and I didn't have to worry about details because there wasn't many in the black costume! The hardest part was thus the face and the hair - Dawson has a long hair and relatively round facial features with high forehead. I wanted the style to be similar to my other Circle figures, so I didn't went far with more modern adjustable eyebrows - partly also because Dawson's eyebrows are not that dominant. So while this creation does not have anything revolutionary technique-wise, I think it fills it part in the broader MOC.

I built the guitar after completing the figure. According to the gig photos I found, Dawson used two guitars in Circle, a black or dark blue Fidelity and red Stratocaster (or similar). I ended up building the Stratocaster for two reasons: First, the Fidelity's colour would have been hard to tell apart from the black clothes, and I wanted to see colour on this MOC (as I always do). Secondly, its head was very small and slender, and it would have been very hard to build it! When making the original MOC, I chose to make the guitars rather bulky, with two-stud-wide necks and correct number of tuning pegs. Not entirely realistic and somewhat funny - but still probably more fitting than thin and dainty ones. So Dawson's instrument is likely too large too, and I'm not that happy with its head, but I hope that's ok. It uses some parts from official Ideas Stratocaster set I reviewed for New Elementary.

And what about the event? Dawson aside, I opened the rest from their plastic wrap cocoons and official Lego ziplock packs during the set-up - and those packing materials were's reusable at all! Most Pori inhabitants didn't recognize the cultural treasure of their city, but a couple of visitors were smitted by it; I think both of them knew Lehtisalo personally.

-Eero.