It's a Small, Small World

By Claudia Atticot

When Willard Wigan was 5 years old, he made a house for the ants that lived in his backyard in Birmingham, England. "I felt sorry for them because I thought they were homeless," he told TFK. The house was just the first of Wigan's miniature creations. Soon, he was making tiny bicycles, furniture and even shoes. "It became an obsession," he says. "It started to take over my life." Today, Wigan's works are a lot more complex. Even so, each one can fit inside the eye of a needle.

Wigan's sculptures may be the smallest man-made works of art in the world. He constructs them out of plastic bag ties under a microscope. He uses a small diamond attached to the point of a needle to shape the pieces. Then, he applies the paint with a hair plucked from a fly. Some of his sculptures can take up to four months to finish. All of his art is invisible to the naked eye. The pieces must be displayed in custom-built cases equipped with microscopes.

To create his tiny art, Wigan holds his breath. He says he works between heartbeats to stop the pulse in his finger from destroying the sculptures. But Wigan has had his share of disasters. While creating a scene from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, he accidentally inhaled Alice! "That was the most painful thing," he says. Wigan eventually built another Alice.

As a child, Wigan had learning disabilities. He struggled to get good grades. "I felt small," he says. "So I wanted to prove to everybody that small things do matter." They certainly do. Last February, former British tennis champ David Lloyd bought 70 pieces from Wigan's collection. The work is insured for nearly $23 million. Nothing small about that!