3 of the Most Talented Artists in the World

Kenya Vanderbeek, Journalist

We are know about Vincent Van Gogh, Leonardo Da Vinci, and Pablo Picasso but what about the artists who create art out of graphite, dollhouses or even rice?  

Image result for frances glessner lee kitchen new york times

Credit: The New York Times, Kitchen (12 April 1944) A housewife in the midst of making a pie lying on the ground dead. Gas is on…murder or suicide?

Frances Glessner Lee (1878-1962), heir to the International Harvest fortune and criminologist. She was the first female police captain in U.S  and co-founded the Legal Medicine Department at Harvard University. Lee believes in equality for all which includes women, the poor, and the working class that would be cases overlooked by prejudice people.

Lee changed the male-dominated profession by using her fortune and what was once only a hobby, to create The Nutshell of Unexplained Death, which is made up of 19 detailed, handcrafted, miniature dioramas that are based off real homicides, accidents, and suicides.

They are the modern day teaching tool that has revolutionized the field of homicide investigation. Every detail and placements of objects in the dioramas, from the placement of blood splatters, bullet holes, to a hand-rolled cigar that has been burned, challenges trainees eyes and skill of deduction and observation.  

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Credit: The Daily Mini

Like Lee, Willard Wigan is a micro sculpture from Birmingham, Britain with a surprising hobby that captures the public’s eye and has drawn the attention of large art collectors.

Wigan struggled with dyslexia in school and was belittled by his teacher. As a coping mechanism, he began to create miniature creations that are invisible to the naked eye.

Using tiny homemade tools, he paints with a hair plucked from a housefly’s back and uses grains of rice, sand, or sugar to carve the figures. He spends months on each piece to create detailed and diminutive figures that are as small as 0.005 mm.  

Willard Wigan has featured Marilyn Monroe, Shaquille O’Neal, The Titanic, the family of Barack Obama, and the iconic picture of “The Last Meal”, showcasing Christ and his 12 disciples as shown above.  

His work has been displayed at Ripley’s Believe it or Not and now a permanent display of David Lloyd’s collection in the Mailbox retail complex in Birmingham.  

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Credit: Augustman.com

Like Willard, Salavat Fidai is a Russian Artist with a unique talent. Fidai enjoys designing and creating sculptures except he creates them out of graphite in pencils. Originally working as a lawyer for 25 years, in 2013 Russia was hit with an economic crisis which encouraged him to switch professions to full-time artist.

Fidai started out with digital photography focusing on still-life photographs. He created a series of artwork, until 2014 when he began to experiment and painted on matchboxes, pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, and rice.  

Eventually inspiring him to experiment with pencils. Fidai welcomed the challenge and spent years perfecting his skill. The process can be very difficult, as graphite’s weak structure becomes very frustrating if the lead happens to break near completion after weeks of effort being induced into a project.

He uses a crafting knife and microscope to create characters from movies and cartoons, celebrities, animals, architectural icons, famous works of art and more. Frances Glessner Lee, Willard Wigan, and Salavat Fidai work is viewed by the public all over the world.

These artists have surprised the world with unique and miniature art that even scientists didn’t believe was possible to create.