His materials include grains of sand and gold flecks. Ordinary paintbrushes are too large, so he sometimes applies colors with a hair from the back of a fly. Each sculpture takes from two to three months to complete. Recently, former tennis champ David Lloyd insured his 70-piece Wigan collection for $22 million. Wigan, 50, who is single, works mainly at night in his studio in Birmingham, England, looking through a microscope as he carves. "To construct this type of work, you have to control all your nervous system, every movement in your body," he says. "You have to work between your heartbeats because the pulse in your finger can become quite detrimental to the work."
There have been mishaps. While creating Alice in Wonderland, "I was lifting her very gently onto the needle. I remember breathing. She got inhaled." But there have been rewards, too, including his recent Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) honor. "If I did a big sculpture, people would look at it and say, 'That's nice,'" muses Wigan. "A small one, the impact is colossal."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
