BROOKINGS — The nearest lightsabers, stormtrooper helmets and carbonite-encased space smugglers aren’t in a galaxy far, far away — they’re located in an ordinary, unassuming home in the south part of Brookings. This is where Star Wars aficionado Matt Simet is living out his childhood dreams.

“I’m a huge geek; but geeks have more fun,” Simet said. “I’m a child of the ‘80s. I was born in ’78. This is the kind of stuff — when we didn’t have cable — we would watch VHS tapes with three movies recorded on one tape. They were always Star Wars.”

Simet’s basement is tastefully decorated with shelves sporting an impressive array of 1980s pop culture memorabilia — Lego sets, action figures and strikingly realistic movie prop replicas. But the pièce de résistance of this shrine to nostalgia is a life-size reproduction of Harrison Ford’s Star Wars character Han Solo, as depicted in the 1980 film “The Empire Strikes Back” — frozen in a stone-like substance Star Wars mythology has dubbed carbonite.

And it was built by Simet himself.

“It was a process. So that being said, I had surgery on May 22 for a double hernia. So as I was recovering — and I’ve always liked this particular version of Han — I just went on the internet and started googling,” Simet said. “You got to do your research. So you’re talking about people who get really serious about movie props, about re-making them — the diversity in that sense is quite varied. They do everything from Marvel to Star Wars to whatever you see on TV — Doctor Who, for instance. If you get excited and you’re a geek, this is really the place to go. It’s outstanding! But you have to do your research.”

Simet’s research led him to a website called The RPF or replica prop forum — and to a Facebook community called the Han Solo in Carbonite Build Group. Through those online organizations, Simet connected with like-minded hobbyists and learned how they built their replicas. From them, he also purchased a couple bespoke components — the light-up electronics on the side of the case and the realistically sculpted visage of Han Solo — that might have proven too challenging to recreate unassisted. 

“So I had to do some sculpting … in various locations around the waist and the neck area just to kind of bring it all together,” Simet said. “Then I was able to start working on the carbonite … and then just put it all together. The last components were really just doing the wiring and the panels.”

He also crafted a French cleat bracket on the rear of the sculpture, capable of supporting 200 pounds of weight and enabling him to mount the prop on his basement wall. Finally — on September 14 — Simet declared the project complete.

“My wife helped me hang this on Saturday morning,” Simet said. “She seems to enjoy it, I guess. I’ll say this — my wife is my best friend and my partner. She lets me be who I am, and I couldn’t value that higher in any sense of articulation. She’s off the charts!”

With Simet’s basement already replete with various vintage toys and movie memorabilia, why devote an entire summer to authentically recreating one particular prop from “The Empire Strikes Back”?

“There’s magic there,” Simet said. “It had all the blessings of a good movie. You’ve got the turmoil in the beginning, you’ve got the fight on Hoth, you’ve got Luke being vulnerable, you got Yoda, he starts his Jedi training, he finds out Vader is his father, he gets his hand cut off at the end. It ends on just such a thunk — only to be continued, but that’s just the beauty of it. That’s why I like it.”

Working with his hands has proven a valuable strategy for Simet, enabling him to cope with the inevitable slings, arrows and laser blasts of stressful, day-to-day life.

“I do it because it helps sedate my ADHD. It gives me something to focus on. It gives me something to think about and plan for,” Simet said. “It’s just something that’s intrinsically satisfying for me. It can be that simple; it can be that easy — just finding something that you like to do.”

Combining his passion for collecting and creating has enabled him to live out a childhood dream.

“My mom was a single parent working at Kmart, so I’d be doing things like going around mowing lawns, raking, we would actually collect cans out of the garbage because we lived a block from the park … but we would do that to collect money,” Simet said. “A lot of the figures that I really wanted when I was a kid or the toys, I wasn’t able to purchase or get — because my mom was just supporting us as a family. So a lot of my nostalgia and the reason I do these things is because I was never able to do them. So you could call it — I don’t know if arrested development is the right word — but this is just the nostalgic part. I always wanted an Optimist Prime figure when I was a kid, and I was never able to achieve that or get that. And that’s okay — because I’ve got like four different versions of him now! But it just took a while.”

He’s tried to share that childhood magic by using his prop-building talents to entertain a new generation.

“I made a Captain America costume from ‘The First Avenger’ movie, because that was my favorite iteration of that costume,” Simet said. “That was right before COVID hit. And the goal was to go down to the children’s hospital … so I was able to do that one year at the children’s hospital in my full get-up with that shield. But really that was the goal — and it was super great.”

Over the years, he’s kept busy creating an array of hand-crafted items that rival his shelves of store-bought souvenirs of the silver screen. He makes rings set with mammoth teeth, opal and tiger’s eye gemstones. He paints in oils and watercolors. He makes resin-top tables. He’s constructed sword handles and scabbards. He’s even built a vintage style, coin-operated arcade cabinet containing 54 different classic video game emulators. Nevertheless — the Han Solo sculpture is the defining conversation piece of his basement.

“To be honest with you, this is probably one of the easiest projects I’ve done. I’m not kidding — anybody can do this. You just have to sit down and take the time,” Simet said. 

Does he consider it art?

“We could go that deep — but it can also be that simple. Maybe people just like the way it looks. Maybe they just appreciate it for how it hangs,” Simet said. “You go to an art museum, man — so what does that mean to you, what do you see? People define that for themselves. That’s the beauty of art. That’s also the beauty of music. There’s so much music and variety out there for everybody, that somebody can find something that means something different to them. That’s what’s beautiful about it. Again, it can be easy — the journey isn’t.”

He said the projects he builds, the art he creates and the memorabilia he collects all distills down to one thing — discovering joy.

“It’s nostalgic, man. It meant something to me then. It means a lot to other people nowadays. It’s got a special place in my heart,” Simet said. “I’m just a geek, man. I’m just a guy who likes to do stuff like this. And again — it’s fun. Is it practical? No, but does it bring me happiness? Yeah. It can be that easy.”

Email Jay Roe at jroe@brookingsregister.com.