I heard someone say that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man to get into heaven. I decided to sculpt camels in a needle.
Willard Wigan
I started making houses for ants because I thought they needed somewhere to live. Then I made them shoes and hats. It was a fantasy world I escaped to where my dyslexia didn’t hold me back and my teachers couldn’t criticize me. That’s how my career as a micro-sculptor began.
Willard Wigan
Flying helicopters is what I do for fun.
Willard Wigan
As a kid, I lived in a fantasy world. I used to believe ants could talk. Not once did they say thank you.
Willard Wigan
When I was a kid, I had trouble at school because of my learning disabilities. Carving is my body compensating for the lack of other skills.
Willard Wigan
There is a child in all of us.
Willard Wigan
At home, when the heating pipes made noises, I imagined a tiny person was in there skipping with a rope. The fantasy world of tiny things became my escape.
Willard Wigan
My teacher said my brain was the size of a pea. He made my life miserable by singling me out in the classroom as a failure.
Willard Wigan
The microscopic world became my obsession.
Willard Wigan
I’m like a mad professor, but without the spiky hair.
Willard Wigan
When you work at a microscopic level, you have to control every part of your body movement – your fingertips, your joints, the pulse in your fingers.
Willard Wigan
I’m just honoring my mother’s words. She always told me, ‘The smaller your work, the bigger your name will become.’
Willard Wigan
I became obsessed with making more and more tiny things. I think I was trying to find a way of compensating for my embarrassment at having learning difficulties: people had made me feel small so I wanted to show them how significant ‘small’ could be.
Willard Wigan
People find it very, very difficult to believe what I’ve done. Scientists have seen my work and they can’t explain it. Even nano-scientists have seen it and been totally shocked. But if any man on Earth wants to challenge me, I’m ready. Bring it on.
Willard Wigan
Those that don’t believe how small my work is should just come along and see it for themselves.
Willard Wigan
There are times when I’ve inhaled my work. There are artworks still inside of me.
Willard Wigan
When I first heard that Barack Obama was going to be the first black president, I wanted to do the smallest, biggest tribute in history.
Willard Wigan
My work knocks people out; you’ve not seen the best of me yet.
Willard Wigan
I was told I would become nothing. Now I am showing people how big nothing is.
Willard Wigan
We didn’t have money for toys, so I made my own.
Willard Wigan
At school I’d want to be so small that nobody could see me, and so my work depicts and reflects me – what it felt like to grow up in a world of pain.
Willard Wigan
People often swear the first time they see my work. I like that.
Willard Wigan
I always say that failure was my friend. I learned nothing at school, so I just lived in my own world.
Willard Wigan