Dylan Sadiq/The College Cuber (2)
NEED TO KNOW
- Dylan Siddique, a 25-year-old artist and biomedical engineer, turned his Rubik’s Cube–inspired hobby into a full-time career creating interactive mosaics for sports fans
- He built an 8-foot, 600-pound mosaic of Mets star Francisco Lindor using 700 spray-painted baseballs, finishing it on-site at Citi Field
- The project combined engineering, artistry and fan interaction, earning Siddique recognition for pushing the boundaries of large-scale, interactive art
Dylan Siddique didn’t just think outside the box — he built one out of 700 baseballs. The 25-year-old artist, known online as the College Cuber, transformed a pile of painted baseballs into an eight-foot-high mosaic of New York Mets star Francisco Lindor, now permanently displayed at Citi Field.
Since earning a biomedical engineering degree in 2022, Siddique has turned his hobby into a full-time career, creating mosaics and live performances for sports teams and fans across the country. With hundreds of thousands of cubes and bricks in his studio, he continues to push the boundaries of interactive art — one giant mosaic at a time.
A self-taught engineer from New Jersey, Siddique discovered his passion for large-scale mosaics during the pandemic. “I realized pixels on a screen are just tiny colored squares,” he says. “Rubik’s Cubes are physical colored squares — why not make real-life images?”
But translating that concept into a baseball mosaic presented an entirely new challenge.
“They literally sent 700 New York Mets baseballs to my house, and I spray-painted every single one a different color,” Siddique recalls. “And mind you, I do not do this. This is not part of my process. Anytime you try something new, you face a lot of unexpected challenges.”
Dylan Sadiq/The College Cuber
The multi-month project involved figuring out how to make the paint stick, carefully drying each ball, and constructing a custom frame topped with turf. Then came the painstaking step of securing every baseball.
“It was like a big bed of nails,” he explains. “I screwed every single baseball onto the frame according to my design.”
The finished artwork was enormous — eight feet tall and weighing 600 pounds. It was too heavy to move, so Siddique had to finish it at Citi Field.
“I was just there at night, by myself,” he recalls. “It was a crazy experience. I finished the piece on site because I couldn’t lift it. Wherever it was going, I thought, ‘I’m just going to leave it right here.’ And now it’s hanging in the stadium, which is amazing.”
For Siddique, the project was about more than the final product — it was about the process. His interactive art often involves fans, turning live events into collaborative performances. “I’m not just the artist,” he says. “I’m the moderator, helping people create something they’ve never done before.”
The Mets were thrilled with the result. “Seeing the artwork up at Citi Field was surreal,” Siddique says. “It’s one thing to make it in a studio, but to have it on display for fans — that’s the dream.”
Read the original article on People