Miniature micro art inside the eye of a needle plus microscope Sculpture

I was born and raised in Poole, the youngest of four children and I left school with no art qualifications but enough to launch a career in engineering, incidentally the school was later demolished and replaced by a flyover, a much more useful thing in my opinion. I was trained by the MoD to work on instrumentation and then I moved onto working with aircraft both civilian and military. A highpoint in my varied career was a role in a photocopier company, but then back to the aircraft industry and eventually giving it all up to look after my Mum, who had dementia although she thought I was Shirley Temple most of the time, bless her. I now live in Bournemouth with my wife, Jackie, in a large house not far from the River Stour. Our children have all grown up and we are lucky enough to both work from home or we are semi-retired depending on who you talk to, so that give me time for my art; All my micro sculptures are created using hand tools that I made myself and a microscope that’s been changed to my own specification I’ve modified it to suit my particular requirements. Each piece may take several weeks to get right as inevitably many attempts disappear in a breath of wind or are lost with a cough or a sneeze! All the pins and needles I use are standard sizes, the same as you would find in any high street shop. I place some sculptures on the top of pins and some on the sharp point while others get placed in the eye of a needle. I use all sorts of material, from plastic to things I find around the house and even grains of sand. I'm always experimenting with different techniques, tools and materials and I aim to challenge myself and improve each time I sit down at the microscope. Over 2 years of experimentation and development followed by a good deal of perseverance and practice has brought me to this point. I have been building and carving art since in earnest since November 2019. I enjoy the technical challenges of working by hand in the microscopic world. Creating the extremely small hand made sculptures gives me a real buzz when people realize just how small my pieces of art actually are. It is no exaggeration to say that everything connected with making the sculptures is hard. It is a real challenge to control my hands and my breathing let alone create something almost literally out of nothing. Only when you look into the microscope for yourself can you really appreciate the colours and tiny details that the photographs don’t always capture.