http://www.willard-wigan.com/ This guy's talented. Very talented. Possibly a relative of Bloody Stupid Johnson, too. My personal favourites are the ship on a crystal and Zeus on a grain of sand.
Hardly in the class of Bergholt Stuttley - he would have started off by creating a needle with an eye 100 times the size of the Statue of Liberty, and gone on from there!
Not sure I like it myself, seems a bit gimmicky. Perhaps more in line with miniature model making than art?
According to all reports, he sculpts them entirely by hand using a very small and sharp scalpel. That's pretty damn impressive. I would be willing to guess that there aren't many, if any other people capable of that. Ok, so he's not that inventive and his choice of display is generally either a pin head or a needle - how many artists just display stuff inside four pieces of wood?
My reference to BS Johnson was due to the Colossus of Ankh-Morpork, Hanging Gardens of Ankh. and the maze in the palace garden. Johnson did put in a few efforts into miniature design, albiet by making horrible mistakes in the design phase. Anyways, gimicky as it may be, it's impressive. It's beyond just plain miniature model making, and that golden ship on a crystal is both original and beautiful.
I sent this to a frieend who's a professional miniature maker-painter for games like Warhammer or Confrontation, with a note saying "Oh so you make minis do you ?" He said he couldn't even work out how it was technically possible... Are we absolutely sure this isn't a fake ?
It's possible. Engravers have been doing this sort of miniature work for years, albeit not always this ambitiously. It simply requires extremely steady hands, a good eye (backed up with a magnifying glass) and the proper tools.
Yes, Roman - I think we all understood that - and remembered the salt-and-pepper set, the beehive and the trout lake - my point was that the smaller BSJ wanted to make something, the larger it was likely to turn out to be - which in a way would be safer - the things which came out the right size were deceptive - they had less obvious dangers - like the UU's Arch-Chancellor's bathroom or the exploding sundial! The surprising thing is that he seemed to have been successful with "Mighty Organs" (to quote Mustrum Ridcully") - as I remember from Soul Music, the UU organ needed the added efforts of the Librarian before it exploded!
He has had several exhibitions, as you can see on his site. He has one now, even. Maybe someone can look into it. Be that it may, it looks real to me.
