BEAUTY IN THE EYE OF THE PINHOLDER

JULY 2nd, 2009

From age 5, micro-miniaturist Willard Wigan, started to express his inner fantasy world by making houses, and later shoes and hats for ants. Wigan, whose micro-sculptures stand a fraction of a millimetre tall, all but invisible to the naked eye, gives the phrase steady hands a whole new meaning. Using tools like a tiny surgeon’s knife, he carves figures out of materials including dust particles and sugar crystals, fragments of gold and grains of sand. He scrapes with immeasurable precision and uses a hair plucked from a dead fly’s back to paint his creations, sometimes spending months on end over a single piece. Incredibly, as he sculpts, he enters a meditative state, slowing his breathing and heart rate to avoid hand tremors that might prove disastrous. As he told the BBC: “You have to control the whole nervous system, you have to work between the heartbeat – the pulse of your finger can destroy the work”. He often toils through the night, when there is less chance of being disturbed by vibrations like those from traffic outside. Willard Wigan is currently displaying his work at the My Little Eye Gallery, Bloomsbury.

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