For Ekow Nimako, this is the best place in the world to play with Lego

When Ekow Nimako started playing with Lego again, everything clicked into place. That was in 2012, and now Nimako, who studied fine art at York University, is one of Toronto's must-watch artists, exploring themes of black identity, nostalgia and childhood with the building blocks he obsessed over as a kid. Later this month, he'll release a book that reveals a few of his tricks. Beasts From Bricks, which arrives August 29, offers how-to instructions for building a selection of his animal designs. And in this first episode of The Places We Make Art, a new CBC Arts web series, Nimako invites you inside the place where you'll always find him playing with Lego: his Toronto apartment.

For the artist, his home studio's appeal is simple. It's all about location, location, location. There's a school across the street, he explains in the video (which was directed by Yan Dal Santo).

Annoying? Maybe for the rest of us. For Nimako, it's majorly inspiring. "Nostalgia and reverie is all part of what I do," he says. "Hearing their voices and their screams and shouts — just children at play, just permeating the space while I'm working — I found that really influences and inspires me."
 

The Places We Make Art is a CBC Arts web series about just that. Profiling Toronto artists from from a multitude of disciplines, step into their creative lives by exploring the unexpected spaces that inspire them the most.