Art: Dalton Getty

A short time ago I posted some examples of telephone book carving.

In contrast, there are some people who make incredibly real, giant sculptures, such as Ron Mueck:

(Click on photographs to enlarge).

There are people who carve fantastically tiny sculptures, sometimes so small that they have to be viewed through a microscope, as with the works of Willard Wigan which fit on the head of a pin or in the eye of a needle:

Snow White and th Seven Dwarfs in the eye if a needle, with the wicked witch on the top.

The Thinker on the head of a pin.

Some carve wooden pencils into detailed, seemingly impossible shapes and links, as with the sculptures of Mizuta Tasogare:

And then there is Dalton Getty, a 45 year old American sculptor who, for 25 years, has been carving the lead tips of pencils with the aid of a magnifying glass, blade and sewing needle. One of his most well known works is called alphabet and consists of 26 pencils with a letter of the alphabet carved into each tip:

“The pencil tip is great; it’s like a pure, very homogenous material. It cuts in the same direction, not like wood, which has a grain. But when I tell people how long it takes, that’s when they don’t believe it. That’s what amazes people more, the patience. Because everything nowadays has to be fast, fast, fast.”

                - Dalton Getty