Willard Wigan Quotes & Sayings

#1. 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

#2. 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

#3. There are times when I've inhaled my work. There are artworks still inside of me.

Willard Wigan

#4. 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

#5. 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

#6. I work between my heartbeat. I have one-and-a-half seconds to actually move. And at the same time I have to watch I don't inhale my own work.

Willard Wigan

#7. Those that don't believe how small my work is should just come along and see it for themselves.

Willard Wigan

#8. I'm just honoring my mother's words. She always told me, 'The smaller your work, the bigger your name will become.'

Willard Wigan

#9. 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

#10. I'm like a mad professor, but without the spiky hair.

Willard Wigan

#11. There is a child in all of us.

Willard Wigan

#12. People often swear the first time they see my work. I like that.

Willard Wigan

#13. 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

#14. 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

#15. 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

#16. 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

#17. We didn't have money for toys, so I made my own.

Willard Wigan

#18. 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

#19. 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