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Willard Wigan, MBE (born 1957) is a sculptor from Birmingham, England, who makes minute work, where a figure can be as small as 0.005 mm (0.0002in) tall. In July 2007 he was awarded an MBE for services to art.
Willard Wigan is the creator of the world's smallest sculptures, often taking months to complete one, working between heartbeats to avoid hand tremors "You have to control the whole nervous system, you have to work between the heartbeat - the pulse of your finger can destroy the work." Wigan uses a tiny surgical blade to carve microscopic figures out of gold, and fragments of grains of sand which are then mounted on pinheads. To paint his creations, he uses a hair plucked from a dead fly (the fly has to have died from natural causes, as he refuses to kill them for the sake of his art, preferring to decorate a glass sheet instead).
Willard Wigan's
TED Talk
Some more images at
Snopes and his
own gallery (second tab)
Willard Wigan's TED Talk
Some more images at Snopes and his own gallery (second tab)
That really is tiny. I guess you can't show this in a museum without a microscope on it. I'll watch the TED show later, wondering how he makes these things.
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