People had made me feel small so I wanted to show them how significant small could be.
- Willard Wigan

The Wizard of Oz (Click to enlarge. Can you see Toto by Dorothy’s feet?)

The Statue of Liberty (Click to enlarge.)

The above are photos of micro sculptures created by Willard Wigan.  You might be wondering what the silver, metallic looking thing is that the sculptures are balanced on.  That would be the eye of a needle.  Wigan has sculpted these figures to fit inside (or on) the eye of a needle.  The EYE of a NEEDLE people!  I don’t know if any of you have ever tried to thread a needle, but I have, and it ain’t exactly as easy as throwing a baseball through a hula hoop.  These sculptures are so small, you need a microscope to view them.  They’re so small that Wigan uses a SINGLE hair plucked off a FLY to paint his sculptures.  They’re so small, that he works IN BETWEEN HEARTBEATS because the pulse from his fingers might mess up his work.  Once, while putting the finishing touches on an Alice in Wonderland piece, the sculpture disappeared when he was working on it.  He thinks he accidentally inhaled it.  I actually cracked up when I heard him say that, but stopped when I realized he wasn’t joking.

The history behind Wigan’s artwork is pretty inspiring.  As a boy, he had undiagnosed dyslexia, so he didn’t do well in school and was made fun of because of it.  So to get away from it all, he would go to the park and watch the ants.  Then he started making tiny wooden houses for the ants.  Then he started making furniture for those houses, and then clothes for the ants, and so on and so forth…he kept challenging himself to make smaller and more difficult things.  Now, his artwork is worth millions of dollars and elicits awe and wonder from those who see his work.

You can read an article about Wigan here, or see more photos of Wigan’s work here and here.  You can see a video interview with Wigan below (watch the video…at the end you’ll see a sculpture of Charlie Chaplin balanced on the TIP of an EYELASH).  Wigan’s official website is here.