#microscopic art

Diatoms Are Forever

O.K. no, they are not forever. But the artwork? It could last forever. During these times (maybe one day we shall enter 1900...) we are seeing a number of artists competing for the best diatom arrangement & some of the more talented amongst have vowed to new share the secret of their immaculate methods. Many of us are familiar with the Cloistered Diatomist (the Monastic Diatomist is also a rising talent). While he would not allow his method to be shared nor publicised (very reclusive), we did find several Bohemians willing to share.

In the process of trial & arso...error, I found some amusing ways to break the diatom’s place on the Great Chain & found a way to have a large window created with diatoms (stained glass is very 1899 [the first one]) in my Embassy Suites. Millions of diatoms & like the people who must silence the surrounding grounds of the palace over & over, the Monastic Diatomist is giddy (for him) to continually make a living piece of art that people HAVE to look at to get in my home. Especially since it requires a very secretive method & the diatom art movement loves nothing more than secrets...

The Copic is god tier pen. 

Willard Wigan is a sculptor. His work does not live in the world as we know, but peer through the lens of a microscope at his work and prepare to be astonished at what Wigan has produced. Wigan grew up in the 1960s and as a child was cruelly told by his teacher, he was a failure. This led Wigan to become withdrawn from school and he would hide in his Mum's shed at the age of 5. Around this time Wigan saw ants crawl below him one day and did not want the ants to be homeless so with makeshift tools started to make miniature houses for the ants; then he realised he would have to make furniture for the ants. He also started to make small sculptures of his teachers that he did not like as it was his way of making them small as he felt they had made him feel. Wigan has been producing microscopic art ever since, with encouragement from his Mother who told him, that the smaller he made his art, the bigger his name would be. This would become prophetic, as he has since become a very successful artist and sculptor.

Wigan has autism and dyslexia, although was undiagnosed as a boy. The 1960s and 70s schooling system was a harsh environment to understand and nurture children like Wigan, he must have felt very small and unnoticed. Wigan's work is sublime, he has even produced the smallest piece of art in the world, a world record called The Beginning, an image of an embryo, sculpted inside a fine beard hair, which was almost invisible, to begin with. The foetus is made from a dust fibre mote he had plucked from the air. It is 53.88 microns in size or 0.053 mm and is an incredible feat of what the human is capable of; Wigan is quite an incredible sculptor. He also has to make his own microscopic tools, and paints with a hair from a dead fly; sometimes he may use a fine eyelash to paint with. He will cut with a tiny, broken, shard of a diamond. Everything is done, naturally, through a microscope on a molecular level, and his work normally has a setting within the eye of a needle or on a pin head. It is no small wonder that Wigan's work can take months to complete, such is the long arduous, and painstaking process that Wigan has mastered over the decades.

He has said that he really does not enjoy making his art. He loves the result of his work, but not the process of producing it. Wigan has to get into a calm and meditative state beforehand and begin the long processes necessary to create each masterpiece. He has to work in complete silence and will make each deft incision or paint in between each of his own heartbeats. Wigan has said that he will sometimes use a heartbeat as a kind of jackhammer to automatically puncture a fine hole needed in his art: a deep breath is needed for each tense manoeuvre as long as he does not mistime his intake of breath. He once accidentally breathed his tiny Alice in Wonderland sculpture in, when his phone rang, a psychedelic experience for the minute Alice, no doubt. It can be perilous; a fly once flew onto his microscope and its wings caused a draft that blew his artwork away. A harsh critic, the fly must have been, sending a million pound's worth of art into the ether.

Just some of Wigan's sculptures made over the years include The Last Supper, The Mona Lisa, Mount Rushmore, Einstein, and The Girl With the Pearl Earring, each inside a needle eyelet or much smaller than a pinhead. There are many cultural stars, musicians, and notables, such as Neil Armstrong standing on the Moon's surface. It may be one small step for man, but it is one smaller peep into Wigan's mind. There is humour in Wigan's work; his piece 14 gold camels, proving Jesus right, when he exclaimed that, 'it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into heaven.' There have been many major exhibitions, worldwide, of Wigan's art, and one could easily buy a ticket for his show and miss his entire life's work, if it wasn't for the individual microscopes and glass domed plinths laid out for exhibition goers to view his work. I have been lucky enough to view some of Wigan's work a few years ago in Liverpool, and I can tell you, it can feel like a spiritual experience when peering into the eyepiece. It felt like viewing the Pale Blue Dot photograph of Earth taken from the Voyager One space probe from nearly 4 billion miles away. There is something deeply humbling and beautiful about Wigan's work, and if anyone gets the chance to see some of his art, then take that chance and you can then ponder how infinitely small we all are.