In Her Words: Barbara Werth

Making a Perfect Minifig World With Barbara Werth
Article and Photography by Barbara Werth

The radiator didn’t yet look like the one we had in the basement; some bricks had to be added. Now I could repair that radiator just like the mechanic did in the morning. No one could imagine that these bricks were nothing more than just bricks. That happened when I was six years old. With the same enthousiasm I build my recent MOCs, the only difference is, people know what they’re supposed to be.

I am Barbara Werth and I’m 33 years old. Since I left my Dark Ages in 2000 and I came back into the “brick”, most of my life is inspired by LEGO. My childhood LEGO addiction began with the Snack Bar (#675), which is still my favorite set. At the age of 12 I thought that growing up meant all toys had no meaning anymore, so I sold some LEGO sets and my grandmother finished off the rest of the collection by giving it away to some unknown cousins. A mistake I will never
forgive. This started a long period without LEGO. I even went years without thinking about about it.

To leave my Dark Ages nothing more was necessary than a Star Wars^TM Gungan Sub. While doing groceries I stumbled over this set. It was cheap, it was there, so I bought it and thus began my adult LEGO addiction. While building, I got that old feeling back: rummaging through a box. I got more and more interested in old and new LEGO sets from different themes but especially Town and Train. Two years ago I wanted to see my favorite band Runrig live in concert in Germany, but I had no tickets. A friend said, “You have minifigs and you have a DVD of their last concert, build it yourself!” I did it and my first MOC was born. In the end this same friend managed to get two tickets to the real concert.

Often I reread one of my favorite children’s books, “The Letter for The King” by Tonke Dragt, and I did so one and a half years ago. This book is about a squire expecting to receive a knighthood, but circumstances hold him back from that to happen and he gets involved in a big adventure. I decided to build a picture story from the book and I began with the scene around a chapel in the first chapter. I published it on the forum www.1000steine.de . The most beautiful part
of that MOC is, I got an e-mail from Casper van Nimwegen, also a big AFOL and great builder from the Netherlands, who loves the book as much as I do. It soon became very clear, why everything has to do with LEGO. I fell in love with him and I moved to the Netherlands.

I found out that I also love building houses and creating town scenes. Living in the Netherlands with all the cute, little houses is very inspiring. With some people of the Dutch LEGO community Lowlug ( www.lowlug.nl ), I was in some model shows in the Netherlands, showing in a big display my own street.

Despite the fact I build little houses, my favorite MOCs I made were the “repainting” of two works of the painters Karl Spitzweg and Rembrandt van Rijn.

Recently I built the story of Cinderella as told by the Grimm brothers. The inspiration came from LEGO’s biggest rival. The
original set was divided into three parts. I liked the idea of showing the whole story from the begin to the… well, there’s no
happy ending, but everybody can imagine what happens to Cinderella after losing her shoe. I have always planned to build a graveyard.

Just a graveyard, I thought, was a little bit too morbid but in this scene it fits perfectly. So after Cinderella cleaned the mess the stepmother left, she walks to the graveyard to get the wonderful dress she impressed the prince with. Cinderella always was and is my favorite fairy tale. Which child doesn’t dream to meet the prince to get out of their daily life?

To me having LEGO as a hobby enables me to make my idea of a perfect world a reality.

My Brickshelf gallery
http://www.brickshelf.com/cgi-bin/gallery.cgi?m=McBricker

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