1. willard wigan (website)
using a hair plucked from a dead fly as a brush, birmingham willard wigan paints miniscule sculptures he has carved from grains of rice and sugar. each ‘brushstroke’ is applied between heartbeats and he has said that the pulse in one of his fingers can ruin his work.
below is the titanic on a pin.
earlier this year a 70-piece collection he sold was insured by the new owner for £11.2million.
2. jin yin hua (website)
the slim photo above is of a 1/2 inch strand of black human hair. on it has been painted the portraits of 42 u.s. presidents. the top portrait can be seen below - click on it for a larger version which is magnified x 1′000′000.
the artist, jin yin hua from china, has painstakingly created over 100 micro-paintings and carvings during the past 10 years.
3. ee jin teo
to ee jin teo, a piece of micro-art on a grain of rice must seem cumbersome. he decided to go a few steps further and created what he calls ‘quantum art’ by reproducing william blake’s ‘ancient of days’ out of nanocrystals (really really small stuff). ‘this photoluminescent version of Blake’s painting was created in porous silicon by focused helium beam writing and subsequent electrochemical etching in hydrofluoric acid’. by the way, 1µm is 1′000th of a millimetre.
4. mykola syadristy (website)
unbelievably, the tube in which the rose above is contained is actually a hollowed out human hair, also polished inside and out. the diameter of the rose itself is a hefty 0.05mm. below is another piece by the ukrainian. the gold mosquito sculpture is life-size.
5. eduard ghazaryan
85 year old ghazaryan is a micro-sculptor with over 600 pieces to his name, one being the world’s smallest working violin (above). the body of the 7mm violin is sculpted from gold, the fiddle from a hair, and it actually works. when challenged by conductor ohan duryan, eduard responded by playing aram khachaturyan’s ‘dance’ with duryan’s orchestra.
the violin in the piece below, seen in a needle’s eye, is even smaller and carved from a golden powder granule.
