## Step 1 - Reading

Reading
Look at the pictures. What and where are they?

What do they all have in common? (What are they called together?)
You are going to read about an artist whose work has been described as the ‘eighth wonder of the world’. Here is are some impressions of his work.
Do you agree? Why do you think they are so incredible?

How do you think that an artist creates these very small pieces of art?
Write down the qualities you think he needs.

patience creativity easily gets angry | good eyesight imagination your own ideas ..................

Read the article quickly and check your answers.

Interview: Willard Wigan
Thursday 2nd April 2015
To Wolverhampton artist, Willard Wigan, size really does matter.
His mother always told him the smaller his work got, the bigger his name would be. And now Willard Wigan’s work is widely recognised as an eighth wonder of the world. In pictures they appear to defy physics, but viewing them up close can leave you speechless.
And you have to look really close – under a microscope in fact – to appreciate Willard’s intricately detailed micro sculptures. But where did it all begin for this world-famous artist? “I remember I had an argument with my mum when I was five, so I went out to the shed in my garden to get away,” he said. “Then my dog Max came along and starting digging a hole. I saw all these ants emerge and I thought, they need a home now. So I decided to build them one. “I used my dad’s razor blade to cut tiny pieces of wood and I made houses and furniture for the ants,” the 57-year-old recalled.
This event sparked Willard’s love affair for making objects of all shapes and small sizes. Willard’s mother was a key figure in encouraging his artwork early on. Willard said: “My mother always told me, the smaller my work got, the bigger my name would be. Every time I created a piece of work, she would always say that’s too big, which encouraged me to keep making things even smaller.” His smallest piece of artwork has been recognised as a Guinness World Record. It is just one-and-a-half microns across, ‘about the size of a blood cell’, which is of a motorbike, made from gold fragments, inside a human hair. So for Willard, good things come in small packages. But just how does the self-taught artist make his work so small?
“I make my work between heartbeats. I have to use micro tools to create my sculptures, such as tiny shards of diamonds. “I even have to break down the paint molecules that I use. I’ll paint with a fly’s hair or an eyelash. When I work I stay away from caffeine and anything else that will affect my heart rate. I prefer to work at night when there is minimal noise and vibration disruption from the outside traffic,” he said. Willard enters a meditative state under the microscope, which he has perfected over many years. He slows his heartbeat down and works between every pulse, enabling him to control his body movements and hand gestures. On average, each micro sculpture will take him eight weeks to create. But Willard admits he never enjoys the making process, only seeing people’s reactions to his work afterwards. A lot of his micro-sculptures commonly sit in the eye of a needle or a pin head. Many famous world figures have the Wolverhampton artist’s micro sculptures in their collections. In 2012, Willard was privately commissioned to create a piece for Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee. Willard sculpted a crown that sat on top of a pin’s head. “When the Queen is impressed with your work, you know you’re doing something right,” he adds. “She was so overwhelmed and excited with the piece, she even sent me three letters” he added. The Queen had previously recognised Willard’s work five years earlier, by presenting him with an MBE in 2007 for his services to art. Despite his rise to fame Willard, , says he was misunderstood by his teachers due to his mild autism. He said part of the inspiration for creating such tiny sculptures was that if people were unable to view his work, then they wouldn’t be able to criticise it. However, now a thriving, world-renowned artist, Willard hopes he can be an inspiration for other people.
“I like to think I could be a testament to people that you can make it, no matter who you are or where you are from. You can achieve anything you want to if you put your mind to it. If you believe in yourself, and you are original and creative, you will succeed. Never be satisfied with what you have done and always try to improve,” he said.
Source: http://nativemonster.com/

Now read the article again and choose the correct answer.

Now you are going to watch an interview with Willard Wigan.

As you watch answer these questions.

1. Why does he show his fingers squeezing a needle?
2. How does he paint the sculptures?
3. How did it all begin?
4. What did he want to do?
5. Has he achieved his ambition?

Watch again. There are six words missing from the transcript.
Can you complete them? Listen and check!

"I don’t actually enjoy doing them because they drive me .....[1]..... doing them. But I get pleasure when I finish them.
I have to make sure that I am as still as possible and everything’s got to be quiet. I don’t have any music around me, nobody around me just tranquillity.
It’s the process of holding your breath and working between your heartbeat and making tools so .....[2]..... small that once you use the tool you have to make more tools because they just don’t last because you have to go smaller and smaller and smaller all the time.
Your body’s got to be still you see because you’ve got to work between your heartbeat, there’s a pulse in your finger and it starts to move like that so what you have to do is sort of .....[3]..... your fingers together and then wait for the pulse to stop. And then you start to create work. Then to paint it, you know that’s the hard bit because you have to use the hair from a fly or I may pluck out the very, very fine eyelash from the corner of my eye and make a little paint brush out of that.
School was a bit miserable for me so I’d always find a way to abscond from school now and again and I discovered what I had when I happened to be in the .....[4]..... one time hiding, hiding from my
Mum, cos I’d just run away from school and I didn’t want to get actually ... And being a kid you just fall
into a little fantasy world you know and I kept thinking that if I make some houses for the ants, they’ll move
in. So I set about making houses for ants. How I done that (sic) I got my dad’s razor blade, broke a piece
of razor blade off picked up some .....[5]..... of wood, and started to slice the splinters and started to build
these tiny houses for ants.
It was just something I was doing naturally I didn’t think it was a gift, I’m just thinking to myself that if I don’t
build these houses the ants are going to be homeless. So then I got carried away, how I made them I sliced
the splinters made little grooves and pushed them together with friction, you know and then there was a little
doorway there doorways and windows and then I got some clear plastic paper like and then cut out little
squares and made the windows and the doors. Then I got carried away and I thought the ants need furniture.
So I thought I might as well make some furniture now. So same principle, slicing little bits of wood and pushing
them together it were (sic) just like I said, it was a natural gift.
It became a journey from there, that was my .....[6]....., to create the smallest sculptures in history."