The Art of Creating Microscopic Sculptures: An Artist’s Journey

Explaining his motivation further, he adds, “I wanted it to tell the story in the smallest but biggest way possible. Sometimes a small thing can say a lot more than something big. If I can do something that brings a little bit of joy, happiness and wonder to people, that’s wonderful.”

The handcrafted microscopic sculpture was painstakingly created and glued together under a powerful microscope for hundreds of hours over the course of about a month.

In fact, an artist must treat his works with such care that he must work between heartbeats, because even the slightest tremor can ruin his work.

“Working at the molecular level makes mistakes unforgivable,” he explains, adding, “Because it’s microscopic, you get all these external forces, like static, bouncing around all over the place. You have to be very calm, hold your breath and work between heartbeats.”

The camels and kings are microscopic fragments of nylon, while the star is made of micro fragments to make it shine, and tiny 24k gold fragments were used for the crowns. The work is so tiny that Wigan painted the micro-sculpture using his own eyelash as a brush.

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The most difficult part of the job was the lead king’s toe, which Wigan was determined to get pointed at the star. He made a tiny tweezer thinner than a human hair out of an acupuncture needle and spent hours positioning it until it was finally in the right position.

“The hardest part was the finger,” he says. “If you only knew. I almost lost my sanity to point that finger. It’s like trying to stick a needle in a balloon so it doesn’t burst. I had to cut the finest, microscopic thread. Less than four microns of nylon.”

His story is also incredible. As a schoolboy, Wigan found that reading and writing did not come naturally to him. At the time, in the 1960s and 1970s, his autism, dyslexia and learning differences were not recognized in Britain. His teachers told him he would be good for nothing, so he found solace in cutting and making.

Mikroskulptors Vilards Vigans (Willard Wigan) FOTO: SCANPIX

The artist describes the feelings of school time as a dead end and he felt like a grain of sand, “because what was said to me depressed me. But when I discovered who I was, it was like planting a seed in the ground.”

2023-12-26 12:52:31


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