Willard Wigan – small is beautiful – but would the ArtWorld say it isn’t art?

Willard Wigan creates sculpture in the eye of a needle or on the head of a pin.

Sugar (?) and…..

Liberty’s statue

Is this thinker’s thoughts small or large?

Elvis on his pin-head.

Visitors to Willard Wigan’s exhibitions view his work through a microsope!

The match.

The Titanic

The Wizard of Oz

The Six wives and Henry VIII+

Of course ’skill isn’t art’ the ‘ArtWorld’ would say – but it certainly cheered my day!

But how does he do it? According to

Willard Wigan is a “micro-miniaturist,” an artist known for creating some of the world’s smallest sculptures. As he and his work are described on his 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 traumatized and unrecognized 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. Willard, who is completely self-taught has baffled medical science and been the subject of discussions among micro-surgeons, nano-technologists and at universities worldwide. His work is ground-breaking — partly because of the astounding beauty of vision which challenges the belief system of the mind and partly because it demonstrates that if one person can create the impossible, we all have the potential to transcend our own limiting beliefs about what we are capable of.

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.

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 harmonize 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.

Willard Wigan works with materials such as toothpicks, sugar crystals, and grains of rice and sand, spending months meticulously carving his materials into micro-figures like the ones displayed above.

And the great driver of ‘rarity and monetary value’ has slapped the art mafia in the face since Wigan’s site tells us ;

Former England Davis Cup captain turned entrepreneur, David Lloyd purchased the remaining Willard Wigan collection of micro sculptured art in February 2007, The collection was subsequently insured by Lloyd’s of London for £11.2 million.

A long time anonymous collector of art, David Lloyd’s purchase has been viewed by many as a significant coup in the art world.

Willard whose work has been described by many as ‘the eighth wonder of the world’ received his MBE for services to art from HRH the Prince of Wales in July 2007.

Thereafter, Willard was commisioned by Lloyds of London to replicate the iconic Lloyd’s of London Building as designed by the award winning architect, Lord Richard Rogers. The difference however being that Willard’s masterpiece was on a pinhead,, which was then sold by Eric Knowles (Bonham’s Fine Art) for £94,000.

From October 2007, the David Lloyd Gallery will be undertaking a touring exhibition of Willard’s work around the United Kingdom. Willard is then scheduled to tour America and Canada.

Willard Wigen’s site is HERE

BBC interview with Wigen is HERE

Other source Snopes Urban Myths HERE - but this story is true!

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Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)

• Art through the eye of a needle sells for £11 million
• MICROSCOPIC NEEDLE ART, GOOD GOD!