Art Blog

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Willard Wigan, Sculptor. It's the Small Things that Matter.

Willard Wigan is a sculptor. His work does not live in the world as we know, but peer through the lens of a microscope at his work and prepare to be astonished at what Wigan has produced. Wigan grew up in the 1960s and as a child was cruelly told by his teacher, he was a failure. This led Wigan to become withdrawn from school and he would hide in his Mum's shed at the age of 5. Around this time Wigan saw ants crawl below him one day and did not want the ants to be homeless so with makeshift tools started to make miniature houses for the ants; then he realised he would have to make furniture for the ants. He also started to make small sculptures of his teachers that he did not like as it was his way of making them small as he felt they had made him feel. Wigan has been producing microscopic art ever since, with encouragement from his Mother who told him, that the smaller he made his art, the bigger his name would be. This would become prophetic, as he has since become a very successful artist and sculptor.

Wigan has autism and dyslexia, although was undiagnosed as a boy. The 1960s and 70s schooling system was a harsh environment to understand and nurture children like Wigan, he must have felt very small and unnoticed. Wigan's work is sublime, he has even produced the smallest piece of art in the world, a world record called The Beginning, an image of an embryo, sculpted inside a fine beard hair, which was almost invisible, to begin with. The foetus is made from a dust fibre mote he had plucked from the air. It is 53.88 microns in size or 0.053 mm and is an incredible feat of what the human is capable of; Wigan is quite an incredible sculptor. He also has to make his own microscopic tools, and paints with a hair from a dead fly; sometimes he may use a fine eyelash to paint with. He will cut with a tiny, broken, shard of a diamond. Everything is done, naturally, through a microscope on a molecular level, and his work normally has a setting within the eye of a needle or on a pin head. It is no small wonder that Wigan's work can take months to complete, such is the long arduous, and painstaking process that Wigan has mastered over the decades.

He has said that he really does not enjoy making his art. He loves the result of his work, but not the process of producing it. Wigan has to get into a calm and meditative state beforehand and begin the long processes necessary to create each masterpiece. He has to work in complete silence and will make each deft incision or paint in between each of his own heartbeats. Wigan has said that he will sometimes use a heartbeat as a kind of jackhammer to automatically puncture a fine hole needed in his art: a deep breath is needed for each tense manoeuvre as long as he does not mistime his intake of breath. He once accidentally breathed his tiny Alice in Wonderland sculpture in, when his phone rang, a psychedelic experience for the minute Alice, no doubt. It can be perilous; a fly once flew onto his microscope and its wings caused a draft that blew his artwork away. A harsh critic, the fly must have been, sending a million pound's worth of art into the ether.

Just some of Wigan's sculptures made over the years include The Last Supper, The Mona Lisa, Mount Rushmore, Einstein, and The Girl With the Pearl Earring, each inside a needle eyelet or much smaller than a pinhead. There are many cultural stars, musicians, and notables, such as Neil Armstrong standing on the Moon's surface. It may be one small step for man, but it is one smaller peep into Wigan's mind. There is humour in Wigan's work; his piece 14 gold camels, proving Jesus right, when he exclaimed that, 'it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to get into heaven.' There have been many major exhibitions, worldwide, of Wigan's art, and one could easily buy a ticket for his show and miss his entire life's work, if it wasn't for the individual microscopes and glass domed plinths laid out for exhibition goers to view his work. I have been lucky enough to view some of Wigan's work a few years ago in Liverpool, and I can tell you, it can feel like a spiritual experience when peering into the eyepiece. It felt like viewing the Pale Blue Dot photograph of Earth taken from the Voyager One space probe from nearly 4 billion miles away. There is something deeply humbling and beautiful about Wigan's work, and if anyone gets the chance to see some of his art, then take that chance and you can then ponder how infinitely small we all are.

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You Get a Car [Everybody Gets a Car] RESOLVE COLLECTIVE Liverpool.

Presumably, this exhibition is named after that time on Oprah Winfrey’s American talk show when Oprah excitedly points to individual members of her audience exclaiming that they ‘get a car’ and then concludes ‘Everybody gets a car,’ sending the American crowd into wild rapture. The title is a sardonic take on the mass consumption and climate-killing frivolity of it all. Fortunately,  I cannot see that happening on a British talk show, someone like Jonathon Ross would probably have only given out half-price car space tickets for the ITV studio car park. Anyway, on entering the space at RIBA Liverpool, which is a branch centre for the Royal Institute of British Architects, it felt confusing at first, a disparate hotchpotch of items, and a set of open lockers, as if this was the cloakroom to the gallery, it made me want to put my coat in one of the lockers, then the realisation that the doors had all been carefully opened at slightly different angles, I understood, using my newly acquired art historical knowledge, that this careful angle placement of the locker doors can only mean one thing, I am now in the centre of a meaningful art installation, reminiscent of a Duchamp ready-made. Yes, Duchamp has a lot to answer for. I have probably used the said lockers on a few previous occasions, they were at the foot of the stairs at the Tate Gallery for many years, and this has been repurposed for this exhibition, to get the message across about the need to recycle, repurpose, and redistribute, with an emphasis on the important work being carried out by the local community-based organisations on offer in Liverpool, such as Home Baked, the Black E, The Florrie, etc.

These important community-based collectives have served the community well and have had a great impact on the well-being of all those taking part or using their services. They are integral projects that are part of the Liverpool fabric. Possibly an example, though, of how underserved Liverpool is by government funding, with its local people stepping up, as usual, when If we were all paid a more appropriate amount for our work, and food, energy bills and rent, etc were lower, there would not be a need for some of the organisations to exist. Nonetheless, it is a reminder of the good people of Liverpool. RESOLVE is a collective who are arts-based and work with communities to help redistribute and repurpose items from Liverpool Tate Gallery, while it has its multi-million pound makeover, to produce a sustainable outcome of redistribution with a positive impact in terms of future climate. One does think though if this exhibition has a positive impact on climate, i.e, the items had to be brought over from the Tate Gallery, I assume the lockers were brought in a van and then there is the heating and lighting of the space, I counted at least 4 television sets on all day, then there is the active invitation of people to its exhibition, some who must visit in their cars, etc. The actual exhibition must have some negative impact, however, in getting its message across, must offset that paradox. It is said the items from the Tate were moved from trollies and everything would eventually be given away in a series of giveaway events.

One hears the staff at the Tate have also been given away free. Expendable. Tossed aside like an unwanted MDF display stand. I wonder if Tate Liverpool also saved money by getting RESOLVE to become de facto removal men and clear out their gallery for them. I suppose it left me to ponder whether it was worth setting up the exhibition, which slightly negatively impacts the environment, and goes against the ethos of the RESOLVE collective. Especially when everything could just be redistributed and given away without the need for it to be shouted about from the rooftops, in the first place. This was the point, though, to educate people and get people talking. Another exhibition would have just taken its place, and I am one of the people who have visited, who are now talking and thinking both about the excellent community projects of Liverpool and reflecting on our impact on the climate. I might even have a conversation with someone else about it, which all help to get that message across. This would not have happened had the items just been redistributed, without a fuss, so perhaps it was worth it in the end.

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I Can't See the Trees For the Wood

David Nash is a much admired British sculptor who has mainly worked with wood during his long career as an artist. Nash left Kingston College of Art in 1967 and bought a chapel very cheaply, in the hills of the Snowdonia Welsh slate quarry town of Blaenau Ffestiniog, which came equipped with high vaulted ceilings, ideal for working with large tree trunks. He still very much lives and works in Blaenau and as well as his artistic practice, he has inspired many students worldwide on sculpture in mainly wood, but has also recently created bronze sculptures. The wood that Nash uses is carefully selected for its properties, and it is also noted that the trees that he works with have naturally fallen or are diseased. Nash’s most famous two works are the subject of some fascination for me. The first sculpture called, Ash Dome, 1977, is a living sculpture and is situated in a mysterious, secluded spot in Snowdonia.

It consists of a series of 22 ash trees that Nash trained to form a kind of covert whirlpool in the Eryri landscape. I would love to visit the ash assemblage, however, its location is a clandestine mystery; only a few are lucky enough to find its whereabouts. From photographs, it looks like it has been caught beneath a freak tornado and gnarled into formation. Nash wanted to plant something to represent hope for the 21st century when the outcome of that likelihood looked bleak in late 1970s Britain. Nash sees his living sculptures as engaging in the physical realms of space and time as if ‘the doctor’ was dabbling in art. He views it as fourth-dimensional art, and Nash is very inspirational in the intellectual rigour of his practice. The sculpture is the genesis, and the end emerges through the pathway of time.

What Nash had come to believe in his love of sculpture, is that his outdoor works do not try to resist the natural elements but have a relationship and engage with their environment. Nash came to this belief when he understood at a young age that the reason he did not like a lot of outside sculptures was due to the destructive resistance to those elements. If they were not preserved, they would look awful or worse; Nash anticipates this with Ash Dome and in the shaping and growing of the trees. Nash’s other famous piece is called Wooden Boulder, 1977. Also, a piece that actively connects with the natural elements, be it at a different point of the life-death cycle. When Nash first sculpted the piece, it was barely touched with his chainsaw and just about took on its spherical form. Nash originally wanted to launch the boulder, but in transporting it back from the forest to his Methodist chapel, it became trapped halfway down a waterfall and he realised that is where it should live. The whole point was its movement and relationship with the elements. It eventually made its way down the stream and into the river Dwyryd estuary after many years slowly moving through the North Welsh landscape. Indeed, it had a very eventful journey through the years and is unfortunately hidden, for now.

Will it reveal itself once more? It is still there somewhere, It might have escaped, but it is there. It is probably Nash’s most famous piece and defies any artistic label. Could it even be performance art? I think the profundity of Nash’s Wooden Boulder cannot be understated. I love Nash’s teaching philosophy, he has come to believe that you don’t just teach a child things as if an empty vessel taking on board information and then being tested on, but rather a child is born with everything already there and the child just needs to learn to identify what they have inside, so Nash says that the teacher's role is to give the child appropriate experiences that they can recognise in themselves. When someone loves an artist's work, it is because they are acknowledging something in themselves. I love this idea and I also believe it to be true.  Nash has exhibited worldwide over the years. Who knows when and where Nash’s most famous piece of art Wooden Boulder will be exhibited next?

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Ladybird book Exhibition. Williamson Art Gallery Birkenhead.

I had been following the curator and all-round Ladybird book expert Helen Day for some time on Twitter or ‘X’ as it is now known, and I was very pleased that Helen’s Ladybird book exhibition was coming to my hometown of Birkenhead. I knew I had to go, the question was, how many times I would end up visiting The Williamson Art Gallery for the exhibition? As I have previously stated, nostalgia envelopes me with each passing year, and for the exhibit to be on in a gallery I have come to since the age of seven, I knew it would be special. Yes, the exhibition did give me a warm glow as if I had just eaten a hot bowl of Ready Brek. Just to give a brief history of Ladybird books, they are the ubiquitous small children’s educational book series from all our childhoods. The original publishers Wills and Hepworth published their first books for children in 1914 under the Ladybird symbol after Henry Wills had opened a bookshop in Loughborough in 1867, previously printing guidebooks.  The big change happened in 1940 when due to the outbreak of the Second World War, there was a paper shortage, and they discovered the perfect way to cut down on wastage was to fold the biggest sheet of paper they could find and cut it into all the pages of a single book. This was the format that came to be known and loved for the nine decades, since, by children around the world.

The exhibition was full of interesting artefacts, ephemera, artwork, letters, and the actual pram, which was painted for the Peter and Jane books. A vast array of beautiful Ladybird books adorned a large wall in one of the main gallery rooms; 500 books in total. This wall of books, alone, could occupy a family for a day or three. My own love for Ladybird books started just like anyone else's love for them, I was given one or two books at an early age and I was immediately drawn to the colourful and vibrant artwork that would send me off into a world of wonder and fantasy. It would have been the first time I saw a witch or Rumpelstiltskin or Little Red Riding Hood. I genuinely believed the characters that had been painted were real. It is difficult to recreate that first sensation of childhood wonder, but on seeing some of the images now, it is the closest feeling to that early sense of awe of being a small boy learning about the world. There were many categories in their series of books such as the ‘learn how to read’ books with Peter and Jane, historical figures, Fairy Tales, and I also loved the ‘How it Works’ series which took in some of the technological inventions of the times, with books on televisions, computers, cameras, telescopes, and space rockets. You name it, any cultural marvel would be dissected and painted in a Ladybird book; they represented so much social history of the twentieth century.

Some of the Ladybird artists were notable artists in their own right, such as Harry Wingfield, and Martin Aitchison who produced photos of the bouncing bomb in World War Two, and John Berry who was an official war artist, whose wartime paintings were exhibited at the National Gallery and painted in North Africa and Egypt during the war, incidentally, where my own father was based at that moment; I wonder if my dad knew or met John? Another Ladybird artist was Charles Tunnicliffe, who was a renowned internationally known painter of wildlife and birds; the books were brimming with artistic talent. We have Douglas Keen, who was the editorial director for Ladybird Books to thank for picking his artists carefully for each genre. The exhibition also displayed photographs of some of the real-life people, who inspired some of the illustrations in the books, which was charming to see. Sometimes neighbours, friends, or wives were used as models. I loved this exhibition, and it moves around the country. I would recommend it to anyone who has a love of these pocketbooks of joy.

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Vivian Maier Photographer Streets Ahead

Vivian Maier was a remarkable American street photographer whose 150,000 negatives that she took over a 50 year period were stored away and left unseen until after Maier’s death in 2009, at the age of 83. With the timely emergence of internet picture sites, Maier’s street photography was discovered, thanks to Chicago-based picture collectors such as John Maloof and Ron Slattery. Since then, Maier’s work has become the subject of worldwide interest with books, documentaries, and exhibitions being made about her life, in particular, the excellent 2014 documentary Finding Vivian Maier, which was also nominated for best documentary at the Oscars. Maier spent her youth between the United States and France before moving back to New York in 1951, primarily working as a nanny for most of her life. It is hard to know where to start with Maier’s work, it is so varied but ultimately would be an understatement to say Maier’s photographs do not feel like someone's old attic box brownie family photographs, although Maier did start her photography with a single shutter Brownie. Maier turns the everyday life that surrounded her in cities such as Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York into individual vignettes of films never made. Her best-known work represents the streets of New York and Chicago in the 1950s and 60s.

Maier often took self-portraits or photographs of her own shadow. In many of her self-portraits, Maier is reflected in the glass of a window or a blown-up shadow on a distant wall. I think Maier occasionally wants to be part of her own record but there is an unsureness that I can relate to; she is there but not there. Occasionally she is bold, and her reflection is captured in a window, sometimes revealed like a spectral presence, other times she is starkly represented in the reflection of a mirror that someone is carrying in the street. I love Maier’s self-portrait mirror shots; I feel I become her in that moment. I am transitorily there at the point where the shutter fleetingly opens to capture the light. One can see the scene Maier wants to capture and the capturer.  Maier had such a great eye for trapping split-second dramas, be it a nun getting wheeled out on a stretcher, a man’s feet emerging and poking underneath a shop window blind, surrounded by food tins, or a film premiere with Kirk Douglas. Maier would walk around on her days off from nannying, traversing the windy streets from the upmarket to the poor areas of town. Nothing was off-subject, and it is a remarkable body of work.

Great care has also been taken in printing Maier’s negatives. A lot of images including the images from the official website were not originally printed by Maier and much debate about how a photographer wants to portray in physical form their negatives was studied in Maier’s case. According to the official website for Maier, Maier’s own printed photographs were examined, and notes were given to labs on how to crop and print etc, were used. One thing is sure, I am grateful that this valuable and significant archive of twentieth-century life was saved, but it does not just represent twentieth-century life. It is far from just a documentation of how we used to live. There is great artistry in Maier’s ability to find deeply humane moments in people's lives and somehow also turn each moment into the most important scene of the play or film.  

Photographs of some of the poor areas and people are very powerful and Maier does not look away from their obvious suffering. It also shows Maier’s own humanity in documenting their struggles, I think that comes across in her work. She had a real kinship with those who were destitute. Maier was a socialist and feminist and, ironically, Maier would also find herself struggling in the last decades of her life and, at some point, did become homeless. Fortunately, some of Maier’s former children, whom she looked after, came together to help her find a small apartment to live in. Maier’s negatives were eventually sold off to pay off debts in 2007, two years before she died, and eventually were sold to collectors such as John Maloof who have taken great care in helping to get Maier’s work in the public domain. Maier was a very guarded and private person in her life. We do not know how she would view her newfound fame, but I for one am happy that I have had the opportunity to see some of Vivian Maier’s astounding work.

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Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Yorkshire Sculpture Park is a great day out for those who love walking and sculpture. It is set amongst 500 acres of rolling Yorkshire countryside and will get you to Olympic fitness if you want to tick off each of the art sculptures that have been made a home at the park. The park contains sculptures from a cavalcade of celebrated artists and sculptors from the last 100 years. Many pieces are quite new with some more famous older pieces from the likes of Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and Anthony Caro to name but three. On the day I was at the park, the rain was torrential and did not yield, however, this added to the whole strange atmosphere of being set free in the estate on such an occasion. I felt alone with the art, for the most part, I was, not many others would brave the weather. I had crashed onto an alien world and was trying to piece together what or who could live on such a planet. Indeed, there is a statue of the astronaut, Neil Armstrong called Bronze Eroded Astronaut to guide me.  Daniel Arsham’s Unearthed Bronze Eroded Melpomene from 2021 was one such piece where it felt like my crash site was at the epicentre of a fallen ancient civilization, reminiscent of the film Planet of The Apes. It depicts a character called Melpomene, a Greek goddess and muse of tragedy. There is a part of the brain that believes what it sees, and this can have a discombobulating impact on the senses, especially as it was situated at the bottom of some neo-classical steps and balustrades from the formal gardens of the sculpture park. The sculptures and their decay are influenced by Arsham, as a child, having his family house destroyed in the early 1990s, by a hurricane.

I loved a few of the pieces, sometimes by the way a sculpture would just look or how it would interact with other close-by pieces and the landscape. At other times, just the size of a piece would have me feeling that sense of awe and a kind of diminishing of my importance under their vastness. Henry Moore’s Large Two Forms was sculpted in bronze from 1966-69 and was a magnificent work that felt like it had lived there for a thousand years. As with any of the best sculptures, I was left just staring at it from different angles and looking through its many contours and planes, which revealed and vanished as I walked around its dense solidity, that jolts up against the softness of its form.  Moore was raised local to the park, so it seemed very fitting for it to be part of this particular landscape.

I also loved the Barbara Hepworth group of sculptures called The Family of Man. I think this was my favourite set of sculptures at the park, I loved everything about the pieces and their relationship to each other. These were sculpted by Hepworth in 1970 and have been at the park since 1980. There is a family of nine pieces, and they are set upon a gentle slope surrounded by trees. ‘Set’ is the correct word as they appear like the gemstones of a fine necklace or ring. The patination of the pieces are sublime, the abstract nature betrays their very humane and familiar aura. I intensely felt that these have been made by a human. The rain gave the pieces a lustre, and the overcast sky would still allow some light to rebound off the remarkable perspectives of their surface; it was otherworldly and serene. My visit was worth it just for this personal moment with Hepworth’s work.

Moving on to the fungible fanatic Damien Hirst, there were one or two dramatic pieces at the park. The Virgin Mother 2005-2006, The Hat Makes the Man 2004-2007 and, I hate to say it, but I felt a deep nostalgic connection to Hirst’s other work, Charity 2002-2003. It consisted of a giant charity box statue of a little disabled girl wearing a calliper, which you would normally have found outside a 1960s/80s British Butcher’s or Newsagent’s shop. It was an outmoded way to pull at the heartstrings to make us part with our pennies for the Scope charity.  Its sheer size shrank me back to wet winter shopping outings outside local shops and how I would have viewed the little girl as not a charity case but maybe an upset little friend at that time. Anyway, it gave me a Proustian rush and it shows you can even like a piece of art from someone you do not like as an artist, be it just by tapping into nostalgia, which does tend to be a weak point, I admit. There were a few other notable pieces from other sculptors at the park. David Nash had some wooden steps rising up a grassy slope; there were many other sculptures from artists such as Anthony Gormley, Ai Weiwei, Willem Boshoff, and Elizabeth Frink, to name but a few.  It is well worth a day out for those who love art, and nature.    

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Cos Ahmet Artist and guest lecturer at LJMU.

Cos Ahmet is a multi-disciplinary artist who makes art in performance, sound, video, installation, and sculpture, with an emphasis on materiality and the body. With multiple disciplines come multi-materials for Ahmet, such as wool in his tapestries and more recently, cellophanes and plastics. Materials are fundamental to Ahmet's work, and his work asks fundamental questions about the human condition, by giving those materials an altered state, it then puts into question what, why, and who we all are. In his video installation, A Meniscus Between 2021 and more recently, Instruments (C changed to S) 2023, he uses cellophanes as his chosen materials. In A Meniscus Between, there is such human interaction with the materials and the materials interact with all human forms. A constant flux between the residual form of the materials and human state, before, during, and after the performance; Ahmet calls this 'pre-post-performance-props.’ And also asks, "When does the body stop being (a body) and become a material?" Through those performances and interactions with those materials, Ahmet is sculpting new forms in both material and human form that did not exist previously and will not exist in the future; a timely dance of human and material interpolations in a causal and visual spectacle, gravitationally pulling in the viewer to the realisation we are all of the same fabric.

I like the idea Ahmet is somehow giving artistic representation visually, to very scientific ideas. Instruments (C changed to S) which partly consist of sculptured tape resembling polymer-like shapes. They look frozen inside ice as if it has just been dug out of the deep-frozen permafrost; the found DNA of cellophane, itself. Not dissimilar to Superman discovering his identity at the Fortress of Solitude, the sculptured fractal-like ice palace. The Paoli Exclusion Principle comes to mind when thinking about some of Ahmet's ideas, thinking about different materials and their interactions. The thought hits big; the idea that every atom in the universe jostles about imperceptibly reacting with and changing all neighbouring atoms, and that in turn means we are all influencing the energy states of each individual atom at the opposite side of our universe, instantaneously. If art can make me think about this, then it must be good art.

Ahmet's use of cellophane tape is a material I have great affection for, as it is a reminder of a happy childhood on a personal level. I love the texture and sound these materials make, it is fish and chip paper, but for flowers. It also has significance as the windows of childhood toy box packaging, the tape that helped to conceal Christmas presents, twisted sweets wrappers, or the crinkly wrapper of Lucozade bottles, I would look through, turning the world orange and heightening the fever dream I was experiencing while off school, ill. It is funny how our surrounding textures, sights, smells, and sounds from our lives can have deep meaning when we think deeper, but when not thought about, can only have superficial significance. A kind of Schrödinger's Cat placed in a box made out of Cellophane.

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Bibliography

Cos Ahmet. (n.d.). Cos Ahmet. [Accessed on 20th April 2024] Available at https://www.cosahmet.com/

David Nash | Artist | Royal Academy of Arts. (n.d.). [Accessed on 20th April 2024] Available at https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/art-artists/name/david-nash-ra

Tate. (n.d.). You get a car [Everybody gets a car]: RESOLVE Collective | Tate Liverpool + RIBA North. [Accessed on 20th April 2024] Available at  https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/you-get-a-car-everybody-gets-a-car-resolve-collective

The Wonderful World of the Ladybird Artists: an exhibition • Ladybird Fly Away Home. (2024, January 20). [Accessed on 20th April 2024] Available at https://ladybirdflyawayhome.com/the-ladybird-artists-exhibition/

Vivian Maier Photographer (n.d.) Vivian Maier Portfolios, Prints, Exhibitions, Books and documentary film. (2013) [Accessed on 20th April 2024] Available at https://www.vivianmaier.com/

WIllard Wigan MBE. (n.d.) [Accessed on 20th April 2024] Available at [Website].   https://www.willardwiganmbe.com/

Yorkshire Sculpture Park. (2024, April 22). Yorkshire Sculpture Park. [Accessed on 20th April 2024] Available at  https://ysp.org.uk/