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The E-Sylum: Volume 11, Number 46, November 16, 2008, Article 21

WILLARD WIGAN: THE WORLD'S TINIEST SCULPTURES

Last week we discussed "The World's Smallest Engravings". This week R.V. Dewey forwarded an ABC News segment about the world's smallest sculptures, created by an amazingly talented gentleman named Willard Wigan in Birmingham, England.

R.V. writes:
The gentleman you are about to meet can neither read nor write! This is a wonderful video of hand carvings the size of a blood cell. Is it really possible? Evidently it is. Enjoy!


From the web page: Wigan Statue of liberty
This man can't read or write but he can carve out the Statue of Liberty inside the eye of a needle. His sculptures are so small that he even thought he may have accidently inhaled his Alice in Wonderland piece. His life's work was sold to a collector for $20 million. Especially impressive was the Charlie Chaplin sculpture that was balanced on the tip of an eyelash.




Wigan Willard Wigan  Elvis


To view the video, see: Art in the Eye of a Needle (http://www.maniacworld.com/art-in-th-eye-of-a-needle.html)

The hoaxbusting web site Snopes says Wigan is the real McCoy. The following was taken from Wigan's web site.
Willard Wigan was born in Birmingham, England in 1957 and is the creator of the smallest works of art on earth. From being a traumatised and unrecognised dyslexic child, he is now emerging as the most globally celebrated micro-miniaturist of all time and is literally capable of turning a spec of dust into a vision of true beauty.

Willard can create a masterpiece within the eye of a tiny sewing needle, on the head of a pin, the tip of an eyelash or a grain of sand. Some are many times smaller than the fullstop at the end of this sentence.

Many are even smaller still, with some being completely invisible to the naked eye yet, when viewed through high power magnification, the effect on the viewer is truly mesmerising.

Wigan Boxing


He works in total solitude at a quiet retreat in Jersey mainly at night when there is a greater sense of peace in the world and less static electricity to interfere with the immeasurable precision and tolerances required to create the pieces.

Wigan Court


The smallest sculptures can only be measured in thousandths of an inch which is why they can sit, very delicately, on a human hair three thousandths of an inch thick. When working on this scale he slows his heartbeat and his breathing dramatically through meditation and attempts to harmonise his mind, body and soul with the Creator. He then sculpts or paints at the centrepoint between heartbeats for total stillness of hand. He likens this process to "trying to pass a pin through a bubble without bursting it." His concentration is intense when working like this and he feels mentally and physically drained at the end of it.


To read the complete Snopes article, see: Microscopic Art (http://www.snopes.com/photos/arts/microscopic.asp)



Kolbe 2008 Jan 09




Wayne Homren, Editor

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